Dysfunctional Diversity: Entrepreneurial Learning in Cognitively Heterogeneous Teams

This study explores how cognitive heterogeneity at the team level-i.e., the degree to which team members adhere to conflicting cognitive frames-impacts entrepreneurial learning behavior. We analyze learning processes in a new-venture team over three time-periods, leveraging rich data from 20 interviews, 990 emails, and 62 internal documents. We find that during time-periods when the team encompassed individuals with a heterogeneous set of cognitive frames, learning was self-reinforcing. During other time-periods, when the team was cognitively homogenous, learning was explorative. We detail the social-psychological mechanisms underlying these findings and present a process model of entrepreneurial learning during each period.