Remote Collaboration Fuses Fewer Breakthrough Ideas

Abstract: Scientists and inventors around the world are more plentiful and interconnected today than ever before. But while there are more people making discoveries, and more ideas that can be reconfigured in novel ways, research suggests that new ideas are getting harder to find-contradicting recombinant growth theory. In this paper, we shed new light on this apparent puzzle. Analyzing 20 million research articles and 4 million patent applications across the globe over the past half-century, we begin by documenting the rise of remote collaboration across cities, underlining the growing interconnectedness of scientists and inventors globally. We further show that across all fields, periods, and team sizes, researchers in these remote teams are consistently less likely to make breakthrough discoveries relative to their onsite counterparts. Using novel datasets that allow us to explore the division of labor within teams and across space, we find that among distributed team members, collaboration centers on late-stage, technical tasks, like collecting and analyzing data. Yet they are less likely to join forces in conceptual tasks, such as conceiving new ideas and designing research. We conclude that despite striking improvements in digital technology in recent years, remote teams are less likely to integrate the knowledge of their members to produce new, disruptive ideas.