| Under the circumstance of bi-challenge with knowledge-based economy and global competition, innovation became the critical mechanism for core-competence; meanwhile knowledge was the core source for innovation activities. Consequently, the importance of knowledge diversity caught more and more attention during innovation research. However, existed researches failed to explore the overall process of knowledge processing, in which the diverse knowledge can be converted to innovative products. The differentiation effect of knowledge diversity and its needs for integration mechanism hadn't been noticed yet. From this point, core logic based on the knowledge integration theory and knowledge creation theory was developed, in which knowledge integration featured with conceptual convergence was the critical mechanism in the process of converging diverse knowledge into innovative product. Interdependent theory was used to explain the activation of knowledge elaboration, and the Motivated Information Processing perspective was used to illustrate the psychological mechanism. Subsequently, a platform is constructed based on conceptual convergence to analyze the knowledge integration in practice. The whole paper consists of four parts.BEI is conducted in Study1 to explore the special needs for knowledge diversity and the influential factors to diverse knowledge integration in the NPD teams. Grounded theory analysis was used and the results showed that:1) the overall process of innovation need knowledge diversity, the originality and its implement were both the result of knowledge integration.2) Knowledge diversity could produce batter solutions, if diverse knowledge was integrated through team members'interaction. That's the way by which innovation succeed.3) Communication barriers came along with knowledge diversity, causing debates, conflicts and making it difficult to achieve the agreement, which is a challenge for leaders.4) Teamwork mentality was the critical factors to help members communicate deeply and thoroughly. Qualitative analysis deduced the primary concept for this research, such as knowledge diversity, knowledge integration and knowledge elaboration. Basing on these findings, the theme of next study was developed.Study 2 discussed the activation of social interdependence to individual's knowledge elaboration and then to knowledge integration. Experimental design used to simulate an innovation task. The level of knowledge diversity, task interdependence and rewards interdependence were manipulated as independent variables, where as goal interdependence, elaboration processing of knowledge and team performance was measured as dependent variables. The results show that:1) High interdependence did improve the team performance significantly both in high and low knowledge diversity level; 2) The knowledge elaboration mediated between knowledge diversity and team performance; 3) Perceived interdependence mediated between knowledge diversity and knowledge elaboration.4) High level knowledge diversity significantly aroused competition goal when the task interdependence was low, but this was not the case in high task interdependence. So findings in study 2 proved that knowledge elaboration was the mechanism of knowledge integration, and social interdependence could be an activation strategy, especially in high knowledge diversity. What's more, task interdependence significantly inhibited the differentiation effect of knowledge diversity. These conclusions emphasize the importance of the logic "differentiation-integration" when processing diverse knowledge, and demonstrate the dialectic relationship between knowledge diversity and knowledge integration.Study 3 explores the primary psychological mechanism lay in the interdependence. In this experimental study, team is regard as "information processor" and knowledge-processing behavior is regard as "Motivated Information Processing" High vs. low interdependence is manipulated as independent variable. The results show that:1) When in low interdependence situation, there is no significant difference between individuals'Other-orientation and Self-concern. But in high interdependence situation, Other-orientation significantly raise up, while Self-concern descends.2) Other-orientation mediates the effect of interdependence to knowledge contribution, searching and elaborating. These findings proved the psychological mechanism of social interdependence's activation to knowledge elaboration.Based on the studies above, study4 focused on the need of managing knowledge diversity in innovation practices. A list of factors supposed to be favorable to conceptual convergence was filtered to develop a platform of knowledge integration. The platform based on conceptual convergence includes task environment, leader, organizational support etc. Questionnaire, Multi-Regression analyze and SEM were used and the results shows:1) Transformational leadership had positive effects on openness to opinions (β=.111*), tolerance to failures (β=.166*), constructive discussions (β=.134*) and deeply dialogue (β=.156*).2) Interdependence of task environment had positive effects on tolerance to failures (β=.192*), constructive discussions (β=.133*) and deeply dialogue (β=.163**).3) Organic structure (β=.206**) and IT support (β=.111*) had positive effects on openness to opinions.4)shared vision had positive effects on tolerance to failure (β=.226***) and constructive discussions (β=.169**).5) Team reflexibility had positive effects on constructive discussions (β=.334***) and deeply dialogue (β=.185**).6) The elaboration of knowledge totally mediated the effect of the knowledge integration platform.7) The platform moderated between knowledge diversity and team innovation performance. These findings proved the "differentiation-integration" logic embedded in knowledge processing, and offered suggestions to managers that they should take a thorough look at action mechanism of knowledge diversity in innovation and take proper measure to manage the integration of diverse knowledge.All these findings suggested that, as a premiss to innovation, the positive effect of knowledge diversity depends on organizational management on it. Focusing on the differentiation effect of knowledge diversity, this research develops a strategy of knowledge integration. Qualitative study, experimental study and experiential study are adopted to prove this opinion.
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