Team Sputnik: Facilitating Knowledge Transfer in Distributed Multi-cultural Teams

Abstract

We consider challenges to knowledge transfer in the context of a large global development team with members from the United States and Russia charged with developing a complex aerospace product. Formed in the mid 1990s shortly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the team was one of the first collaborative R&D efforts among former adversaries. Members of the team dealt with numerous discontinuities over the course of its five-year life. Vastly different management practices, accounting methods, technical approaches, and group norms imbedded in different languages and rooted in national cultures contributed to the complexity of the joint project. Over time, they were able to address these discontinuities by deliberately creating what the authors term a “third culture”, one that was not American and not Russian, but rather a culture unique to the team. We offer guidelines to help distributed multi-cultural teams transcend their individual cultures and create a “third culture” in order to be more effective and efficient in their work.