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New ideas are often thought to arise from recombining existing knowledge. Yet despite rapid publication growth - and expanding opportunities for recombination - scientific breakthroughs remain rare. This gap between productivity and…
Despite persistent efforts to understand the dynamics of creativity of scientists over careers in terms of productivity, impact, and prize, little is known about the dynamics of scientists' disruptive efforts that affect individual academic…
Science is built on the scholarly consensus that shifts with time. This raises the question of how new and revolutionary ideas are evaluated and become accepted into the canon of science. Using two recently proposed metrics, we identify…
Innovation and obsolescence describe the dynamics of ever-churning social and biological systems, from the development of economic markets to scientific and technological progress to biological evolution. They have been widely discussed,…
The ideas that we forge creatively as individuals and groups build on one another in a manner that is cumulative and adaptive, forming open-ended lineages across space and time. Thus, human culture is believed to evolve. The pervasiveness…
Human creativity is the ultimate driving force behind scientific progress. While the building blocks of innovations are often embodied in existing knowledge, it is creativity that blends seemingly disparate ideas. Existing studies have made…
The logic of abduction involves a collision between deduction and induction, where empirical surprises violate expectations and scientists innovate to resolve them. Here we reformulate abduction as a social process, occurring not only…
We envision future technologies through science fiction, strategic planning, or academic research. Yet, our expectations do not always match with what actually unfolds, much like navigating a story where some events align with expectations…
It appears paradoxical that science is producing outstanding new results and theories at a rapid rate at the same time that researchers are identifying serious problems in the practice of science that cause many reports to be irreproducible…
Scientific innovation increasingly depends on collaboration, yet the organizational structure that fosters breakthrough ideas remains poorly understood. Existing metrics - such as team size or compositional diversity - capture readily…
Innovation is to organizations what evolution is to organisms: it is how organisations adapt to changes in the environment and improve. Governments, institutions and firms that innovate are more likely to prosper and stand the test of time;…
The combination of diverse, pre-existing knowledge is a common explanation for scientific breakthroughs. However, a paradox exists: while scientific output and the potential for such recombination have grown exponentially, the rate of…
As the diversity of people in higher education grows, Universities are struggling to provide inclusive environments that nurture the spirit of free inquiry in the presence of these differences. At the extreme, the value of diversity is…
We propose an explanatory and computational theory of transformative discoveries in science. The theory is derived from a recurring theme found in a diverse range of scientific change, scientific discovery, and knowledge diffusion theories…
Socio-diversity, the variety of human opinions, ideas, behaviors and styles, has profound implications for social systems. While it fuels innovation, productivity, and collective intelligence, it can also complicate communication and erode…
Many theories of scientific and technological progress imagine science as an iterative, developmental process periodically interrupted by innovations which disrupt and restructure the status quo. Due to the immense societal value created by…
Progress in science and technology is punctuated by disruptive innovation and breakthroughs. Researchers have characterized these disruptions to explore the factors that spark such innovations and to assess their long-term trends. However,…
Immersion in a creative task can be an intimate experience. It can feel like a mystery: intangible, inexplicable, and beyond the reach of science. However, science is making exciting headway into understanding creativity. While the mind of…
Despite extensive research on scientific disruption, two questions remain: why disruption has declined amid growing knowledge, and why disruptive work receives fewer and delayed citations. One way to address these questions is to identify…
A growing literature has examined whether innovation is becoming less disruptive, spanning diverse domains and data sources and using a range of methodologies. This paper provides an inventory of 105 studies exploring this question. The…