Collective knowledge and the associated concepts of collectively learning remembering and
inventing are increasingly important in today's economy and society. Completing knowledge work
alone is more and more difficult for individuals. Based on novel data sets which identify
founders as inventors on patents and survey data collected from senior management the author
investigates questions about knowledge processing. What determines whether dispersed specialist
knowledge can be located and used to complete tasks or to create new knowledge? How are social
interactions organized and to what extent do individuals such as founders influence the course
of action taken by the system as a whole?
