Remote work seems to be well suited for some kinds of knowledge work, but it’s less clear that it’s well suited for the kind of collaborative creativity that results in breakthrough innovations. A series of new papers suggests breakthrough innovation by distributed teams has traditionally been quite difficult, but also that things have changed, possibly dramatically, as remote collaboration technology has improved.
This podcast is an audio read through of the (initial draft of the) post Remote Breakthroughs, originally published on New Things Under the Sun.
Articles Mentioned
Van der Wouden, Frank. 2020. A history of collaboration in US invention: changing patters of co-invention, complexity and geography. Industrial and Corporate Change 29(3): 599-619. https://doi.org/10.1093/icc/dtz058
Lin, Yiling, Carl Benedikt Frey, and Lingfei Wu. 2022. Remote collaboration fuses fewer breakthrough ideas. arXiv:2206.01878. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2206.01878
Lin, Yiling, James A. Evans, and Lingfei Wu. 2022. New directions in science emerge from disconnection and discord. Journal of Informetrics 16(1): 101234. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2021.101234
Berkes, Enrico, and Ruben Gaetani. 2021. The Geography of Unconventional Innovation. The Economic Journal131(636): 1466-1514. https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueaa111
Duede, Eamon, Misha Teplitskiy, Karim Lakhani, and James Evans. 2021. Being Together in Place as a Catalyst for Scientific Advance. arXiv:2107.04165. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2107.04165
Frey, Carl Benedikt, and Giorgio Presidente. 2022. Disrupting Science. Working Paper.
Esposito, Christopher. 2021. The Geography of Breakthrough Innovation in the United States over the 20th Century. Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography 2126. Working paper.