Examining the relationship between knowledge brokerage and individual creativity

Despite the relationship between brokerage and individual creativity has been extensively investigated in the literature, so far research has mostly focused on the diversity of information accessible from alters. In order to fill this gap, this work focuses on the relevance of ego’s knowledge within diverse networks and suggests that brokers can benefit from their position advantage depending upon the knowledge they possess in relation to their alters’ one. In order to develop our argument, we ground on Postrel’s (2002) distinction between specialized knowledge and trans-specialist understanding attempting to answer the following research question: “To what extent does broker’s specialized knowledge vs trans-specialist understanding benefit his/her own creativity?”. We further examine this relationship by contending that broker’s creativity is influenced by his/her metaknowledge, i.e., the extent to which he/she knows what his/her alters know.