Page - (000267) - in Knowledge and Networks

263 Our analysis of 17.9 million papers across all scientific fields suggests that the highest-impact science draws on primarily highly conventional combinations of prior work with an intrusion of combinations unlikely to have been joined before. These patterns suggest that novelty and conventionality are not factors in opposition; rather, papers that mix high tail novelty with high median conventionality have nearly twice the propensity to be unusually highly cited. These findings have implications for theories about creativity and scientific prog- ress. Combinations of existing material are centerpieces in theories of creativity, whether in the arts, the sciences, or commercial innovation (Becker, 1982; Collins, 1998; Guimera et al., 2005; Jones, 2009; Schilling & Phelps, 2007; Schumpeter, 1939; Usher, 1929/1998; Uzzi & Spiro, 2005; Weitzman, 1998). Across the sci- ences, the propensity for high impact work is sharply elevated when combinations of prior work are anchored in substantial conventionality while mixing in a left tail of combinations that are rarely seen together. In part, this pattern may reflect advan- tages to being within the mainstream of a research trajectory, where scientists are currently focused while being distinctive in one’s creativity. For example, as men- tioned in the beginning of the chapter, Newton remained in the mainstream of tradi- tional geometry and at the same time remained creative while communicating the laws of gravitation in Principia. Combinations of prior work also relate to “burden of knowledge” theory, which emphasizes the growing knowledge demands upon scientists (Einstein, 1949; Fleming, 2001; Jones, 2009). New articles indexed by the WOS now exceed 1.4 million per year across 251 fields, encouraging specialization Fig. 12.12 Mean of hit citations with time for three fields. For each of the fields—geography, economics, and physics—we consider the “hit” papers. Hit papers are defined as those in the top 5 % of citations. The plot shows the evolution of mean hit citations in time. For geography, the value of mean hit citations is much lower when compared to hit papers in physics and economics (Design by authors) 12 How Atypical Combinations of Scientific Ideas Are Related to Impact:…