For many knowledge workers, the rhythm of organizational life is punctuated by attending temporary gatherings such as conferences, trade shows, hackathons, or festivals, where they mingle with counterparts from other organizations. Some temporary gatherings become wellsprings of invention, fostering the remixing of diverse prior knowledge. Other temporary gatherings become echo chambers, reinforcing the status quo. Despite their ubiquity, surprisingly little research addresses how and why some temporary gatherings foster new ideas while others do not. In this paper, we put forth a conceptual model of knowledge recombination at temporary gatherings. Building on research on the complementary cognitive, structural, and relational antecedents of innovation, we identify how knowledge recombination at temporary gatherings differs compared with formal organizations and how highly generative gatherings differ from less generative gatherings. Many gatherings fail to realize their knowledge generation potential because common networking behaviors create “temporary silos” of segregated knowledge. In contrast, generative gatherings remix diverse knowledge through inherent randomness, emergent small-world search, and boundary-spanning gathering designs. We contribute to innovation research by conceptualizing temporary gatherings as a distinctive social context for knowledge creation and by articulating how gathering design can become a subfield of organization design.
