Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Complexity and access to a template
Success in receiving and building on complex knowledge depends crucially on access to
the original success, which serves as a
template
(Nelson and Winter, 1982, pp. 119-20;
Winter, 1995). For reasons explored below, individuals dif er in their access to the tem-
plate. Superior access facilitates the knowledge recipient's search in at least two ways.
First, the recipient begins searching in closer proximity to the ultimate target - as a
result of either fewer errors in the interpretation of the transmission or smaller gaps
in the information sent. Second, superior access allows the recipient to solicit advice
when problems arise, helping the recipient to home in on the desired knowledge more
ei ciently.
Consider two actors both trying to receive and build on a valuable piece of knowl-
edge but who dif er in their access to the template. The i rst has superior, though
admittedly still imperfect, access to and understanding of the original, successful
recipe. The second has far poorer access. To what degree does the i rst actor's superior
but imperfect access to the template have value, in the sense that it enables the actor
to receive and build on the original recipe more ef ectively? We contend that the value
of this access depends on the complexity of the underlying knowledge in an inverted
U-shaped relationship; that is, intermediate levels of interdependence maximize the
value of preferential access.
Suppose i rst that the ingredients of the knowledge do not interact; getting one element
in the recipe wrong diminishes that component's contribution to the whole, but it does
not undermine the other components. In this situation, the i rst actor's access to the tem-
plate does not educe a persistent advantage. Through routine, incremental search ef orts,
the second actor can reconstruct the recipe. Few local peaks threaten to trap the poorly
informed recipient. As a result, both actors eventually fare equally well; search on the
part of a recipient can easily substitute for high-i delity transmission.
Next consider knowledge with an intermediate degree of interdependence. Local peaks
now appear, but they remain relatively few in number. The well-informed actor begins
its search near, but not precisely at, the original combination of ingredients. Through
incremental search, and with recourse to the template, it can assemble the proper combi-
nation of ingredients. The second actor, who likely begins search farther from the target
and receives less guidance about the direction in which to explore, more likely becomes
ensnared on some local peak, away from and inferior to the original success. Here
superior access to the template gives the i rst actor an advantage that the second cannot
recreate through search.
Finally, imagine a piece of maximally interdependent knowledge: ingredients depend
on one another in an extremely delicate way, and none produces much benei t unless all
align perfectly. Local peaks now pervade the landscape and neither actor's incremental
search will likely reproduce or build on the original knowledge with any success. The i rst
actor's superior access to the template thus has little value beyond the second's highly
imperfect access.
Taken together, these arguments imply that the advantage of superior but imperfect
access to the template reaches its peak at moderate levels of interdependence between
knowledge components. With moderate interdependence, the smoothness of the land-
scape allows a party that begins its search near the desired peak to rediscover it through
local search. Yet the landscape also has sui cient ruggedness that a party that begins
