Slowing down to speed up: how ad hoc teams coordinate problem and solution expertise under uncertainty
27 May 2026
11:30 -13:00
GMT+1
Open to: All
Room W2.01 (Cambridge Judge Business School)
Trumpington St
Cambridge
CB2 1AG
United Kingdom
Join our Organisational Theory and Information Systems seminar
Speaker: Professor Georg von Krogh, ETH Zurich
About the seminar topic
Prior research portrays coordination under uncertainty as an interplay of predefined structures and informal practices. Yet ad hoc problem-solving teams in accelerated settings must coordinate expertise under task uncertainty without prior familiarity or predefined structures. In an important subset of these teams, solution experts collaborate with ‘problem experts’ whose lived experience of the problem is tacit. Because problem expertise is weakly signalled by status cues, informal dynamics tend to privilege solution expertise, producing misalignment between influence and task-relevant knowledge. We know little about how such teams coordinate expertise early so that problem expertise guides collective work. Drawing on a study of 20 hackathon teams of technical experts and individuals with disabilities, we identify joint problem formulation as a key coordination process. Successful teams slowed early interactions to engage in joint problem formulation, thereby surfacing problem expertise and constructing a shared understanding of the problem and constraints. These formative interactions not only reduced task uncertainty but also recalibrated informal hierarchies around demonstrated expertise, improving coordination and enabling user-fitting solutions. Our study contributes to coordination, status, and innovation research by theorising joint problem formulation as an expertise-coordination mechanism through which teams realign influence and ‘slow down to speed up’ in accelerated problem-solving.
Speaker bio
Georg von Krogh is a Swiss-Norwegian management scholar. He is a Professor at ETH Zurich and holds the Chair of Strategic Management and Innovation. He is the Head of the Department of Management Technology, and Economics, and chairs the Global Advisory Board that advises the President of ETH Zurich in matters regarding its international strategy. He also serves on the Risk Management Commission at ETH Zurich. His research focuses on digital strategy, innovation and knowledge management. He has several years of editorial experience with leading management journals.
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No registration required. If you have any questions about this seminar, please email Luke Slater.