David Stark is Arthur Lehman Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at
Columbia University where he directs the Center on Organizational Innovation. His most
recent book, The Sense of Dissonance: Accounts of Worth in Economic Life (Princeton
University Press 2009) is an ethnographic account of how organizations and their
members search for what is valuable. Dissonance – disagreement about the principles
of worth – can lead to discovery.
Stark’s current research employs large datasets to study the social sources of creativity.
Supported by a major grant from the National Science Foundation, his research team is
developing network analysis to examine the historical structures whereby teams
assemble, disassemble, and resassemble. They are currently analyzing data on every
commercially released video game (some 28,000 video games involving an estimated
310,000 unique invididuals) and approximately 40,000 jazz recording sessions involving
some 400,000 musicians).
His recent publications include “From Dissonance to Resonance: Cognitive
Interdependence in Quantitative Finance,” Economy and Society, 2012; “Political Holes
in the Economy: The Business Network of Partisan Firms in Hungary,” American
Sociological Review, 2012; and “Structural Folds: Generative Disruption in Overlapping
Groups,” American Journal of Sociology, 2010.
Stark received his B.A. from Princeton University in 1972 and his PhD in Sociology from
Harvard University in 1982. Among various awards, Stark was named a Guggenheim
Fellow in 2002. He has been a visiting fellow at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en
Sciences Sociales in Paris; the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in
Cologne; the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study; the Russell Sage Foundation in
New York City; the Institute of Advanced Study in Durham, UK; the University of
Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand; the Center for Advanced Study in the
Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto; the Institute for Advanced Study/Collegium Budapest;
the Center for the Social Sciences in Berlin; and the Institute for Human Sciences in
Vienna.
Stark’s CV, papers, course materials, “silent
lectures,” and other presentations are available
at thesenseofdissonance.com
Game Changer:
The Topography of Creativity in Video Game Development
Abstract. Network research suggests that a team topology balancing familiarity (via
cohesion) and diversity (via brokerage) is the key to success. We go beyond the duality
of brokerage and closure by adopting the concept of structural folding – the generative
tension in overlapping cohesive groups. In elaborating the causal mechanisms at work in
structural folding, we hypothesize that the effects of structural folding on inventiveness
and on creative success are especially strong when overlapping groups are cognitively
distant. Teams are most likely to produce game changing creative success when their
cognitively heterogeneous communities have points of intersection. We draw on work on
topologies of knowledge in the field of semiotics to conceptualize the role of folding in
channelling and mobilizing the productive tension of cognitive distance. To test our
hypothesis about structural folding and cognitive distance, we study the historical
mechanisms of team reassembly in the video game industry. We collected data on
12,094 video games that were produced from the inception of the industry in 1979 to
2009. Because we measure inventiveness independently from critical success, we can
test whether teams with structural folds that span cognitively distant communities are
able to develop distinctive products that are, at the same time, recognized as successful
in the video gaming field.