Efficiency-Innovation Trade-off in Creative Industries: Team-Level Empirically Grounding Analytics

Abstract

In creative industries, new products often originate from creators who coalesce temporarily to work in teams. These teams must efficiently deliver innovative offerings to remain competitive. This challenge of balancing efficiency and innovation has been well-documented at the organizational level, but it has yet to be examined at the team level, especially in creative industries where creative teams form organically without organizational intervention. This study focuses on board game design teams and investigates the relationship between team characteristics and team performance. By applying empirically grounded analytical methods to data retrieved from BoardGameGeek.com, we evaluate the efficiency of these design teams and reveal a trade-off between efficiency and innovation. Drawing on coordination theory and the knowledge sourcing perspective, we explore two pivotal team characteristics at the heart of this trade-off: staff and structure, operationalized as team size and average centrality, respectively. Both of these aspects have a dampening effect on efficiency but foster innovation. This research is among the first to empirically investigate project-based board game design teams without organizational intervention, validating the well-documented efficiency-innovation trade-off at the team level and offering insights into the underlying mechanisms. The findings provide managerial implications for team design and team operations within creative industries.

Keywords: Team operations, board game industry, creative industries, efficiency-innovation trade-off, three-stage data envelopment analysis