Investigating the relationship between structural holes and creativity

Despite the relationship between network structure and individual creativity has been extensively investigated in the literature, so far research has mostly focused on the diversity of information accessible from alters (see, for instance, Aral & Van Alstyne, 2011; Rogan & Mors, 2014). In order to fill this gap, I focus on the relevance of ego’s knowledge within diverse networks and suggest that brokers can benefit from their position advantage depending on the knowledge they possess in relation to their alters’ one. I ground on Postrel’s (2002) distinction between specialized knowledge and trans-specialist understanding in order to answer the following research question: “To what extent does broker’s specialized knowledge vs trans-specialist understanding benefit his/her own creativity?”. Moreover, I expect the relationship between broker’s knowledge and his/her creativity to change depending upon ego’s metaknowledge, i.e., the extent to which he/she knows what his/her alters know (Lewis & Herndon, 2011; Mell et al., 2014).