IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/respol/v48y2019i3p733-747.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Breakthrough recognition: Bias against novelty and competition for attention

Author

Listed:
  • Chai, Sen
  • Menon, Anoop

Abstract

Adding to the literature on the recognition and spread of ideas, and alongside the bias against novelty view documented in prior research, we introduce the perspective that articles compete for the attention of researchers who might build upon them. We investigate this effect by analyzing more than 5.3 million research publications from 1970 to 1999 in the life sciences. In support of our competition for attention perspective, we show that articles covering rarely addressed topics tend to receive more citations and have a higher chance of being breakthrough papers as compared to articles on more popular topics. We also explore conditions under which these effects might vary by using decade subsamples, home- versus foreign-field forward citations, as well as short-, medium- and long-term time windows. Finally, we also find evidence consistent with the previously documented bias against novelty and show that both mechanisms can work simultaneously.

Suggested Citation

  • Chai, Sen & Menon, Anoop, 2019. "Breakthrough recognition: Bias against novelty and competition for attention," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 733-747.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:respol:v:48:y:2019:i:3:p:733-747
    DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2018.11.006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733318302774
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.respol.2018.11.006?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Benjamin F. Jones, 2009. "The Burden of Knowledge and the "Death of the Renaissance Man": Is Innovation Getting Harder?," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 76(1), pages 283-317.
    2. Andrew Fire & SiQun Xu & Mary K. Montgomery & Steven A. Kostas & Samuel E. Driver & Craig C. Mello, 1998. "Potent and specific genetic interference by double-stranded RNA in Caenorhabditis elegans," Nature, Nature, vol. 391(6669), pages 806-811, February.
    3. William Ocasio, 2011. "Attention to Attention," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 22(5), pages 1286-1296, October.
    4. Bill McEvily & Akbar Zaheer, 1999. "Bridging ties: a source of firm heterogeneity in competitive capabilities," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(12), pages 1133-1156, December.
    5. Wang, Jian & Veugelers, Reinhilde & Stephan, Paula, 2017. "Bias against novelty in science: A cautionary tale for users of bibliometric indicators," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(8), pages 1416-1436.
    6. Sam Arts & Lee Fleming, 2018. "Paradise of Novelty—Or Loss of Human Capital? Exploring New Fields and Inventive Output," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 29(6), pages 1074-1092, December.
    7. Atul Nerkar & Scott Shane, 2007. "Determinants of invention commercialization: an empirical examination of academically sourced inventions," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(11), pages 1155-1166, November.
    8. Pedro Bordalo & Nicola Gennaioli & Andrei Shleifer, 2016. "Competition for Attention," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 83(2), pages 481-513.
    9. Anthony F. J. van Raan, 2004. "Sleeping Beauties in science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 59(3), pages 467-472, March.
    10. Amit Nigam & William Ocasio, 2010. "Event Attention, Environmental Sensemaking, and Change in Institutional Logics: An Inductive Analysis of the Effects of Public Attention to Clinton's Health Care Reform Initiative," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 21(4), pages 823-841, August.
    11. Nooteboom, Bart & Van Haverbeke, Wim & Duysters, Geert & Gilsing, Victor & van den Oord, Ad, 2007. "Optimal cognitive distance and absorptive capacity," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(7), pages 1016-1034, September.
    12. Pierre Azoulay & Joshua S. Graff Zivin & Jialan Wang, 2010. "Superstar Extinction," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(2), pages 549-589.
    13. Jasjit Singh & Lee Fleming, 2010. "Lone Inventors as Sources of Breakthroughs: Myth or Reality?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 56(1), pages 41-56, January.
    14. Karan Girotra & Christian Terwiesch & Karl T. Ulrich, 2010. "Idea Generation and the Quality of the Best Idea," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 56(4), pages 591-605, April.
    15. Lee Fleming, 2001. "Recombinant Uncertainty in Technological Search," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 47(1), pages 117-132, January.
    16. Andrew J. Hoffman & William Ocasio, 2001. "Not All Events Are Attended Equally: Toward a Middle-Range Theory of Industry Attention to External Events," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 12(4), pages 414-434, August.
    17. Verhoeven, Dennis & Bakker, Jurriën & Veugelers, Reinhilde, 2016. "Measuring technological novelty with patent-based indicators," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 707-723.
    18. Ganesh Iyer & Zsolt Katona, 2016. "Competing for Attention in Social Communication Markets," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(8), pages 2304-2320, August.
    19. Jeffrey L. Furman & Scott Stern, 2011. "Climbing atop the Shoulders of Giants: The Impact of Institutions on Cumulative Research," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(5), pages 1933-1963, August.
    20. Sen Chai, 2017. "Near Misses in the Breakthrough Discovery Process," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 28(3), pages 411-428, June.
    21. William Ocasio, 1997. "Towards An Attention‐Based View Of The Firm," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(S1), pages 187-206, July.
    22. James G. March & Zur Shapira, 1987. "Managerial Perspectives on Risk and Risk Taking," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 33(11), pages 1404-1418, November.
    23. Rosenberg, Nathan, 1974. "Science, Invention and Economic Growth," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 84(333), pages 90-108, March.
    24. Kevin J. Boudreau & Eva C. Guinan & Karim R. Lakhani & Christoph Riedl, 2016. "Looking Across and Looking Beyond the Knowledge Frontier: Intellectual Distance, Novelty, and Resource Allocation in Science," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(10), pages 2765-2783, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Belkhouja, Mustapha & Fattoum, Senda & Yoon, Hyungseok (David), 2021. "Does greater diversification increase individual productivity? The moderating effect of attention allocation," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(6).
    2. Li, Xin & Ma, Xiaodi & Feng, Ye, 2024. "Early identification of breakthrough research from sleeping beauties using machine learning," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2).
    3. Michaël Bikard & Matt Marx, 2020. "Bridging Academia and Industry: How Geographic Hubs Connect University Science and Corporate Technology," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(8), pages 3425-3443, August.
    4. Ke, Qing, 2020. "Technological impact of biomedical research: The role of basicness and novelty," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(7).
    5. Sam Arts & Nicola Melluso & Reinhilde Veugelers, 2023. "Beyond Citations: Measuring Novel Scientific Ideas and their Impact in Publication Text," Papers 2309.16437, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2024.
    6. Conor O’Kane & Jing A. Zhang & Jarrod Haar & James A. Cunningham, 2023. "How scientists interpret and address funding criteria: value creation and undesirable side effects," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 61(2), pages 799-826, August.
    7. Zhentao Liang & Jin Mao & Gang Li, 2023. "Bias against scientific novelty: A prepublication perspective," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 74(1), pages 99-114, January.
    8. Md. Yahin Hossain & Zhiqiang Liu & Nilesh Kumar, 2020. "How does self-performance expectation foster breakthrough creativity in the employee's cognitive level? An application of self-fulfilling prophecy," International Journal of Research in Business and Social Science (2147-4478), Center for the Strategic Studies in Business and Finance, vol. 9(5), pages 116-128, September.
    9. Varshney, Mayank, 2023. "Learning-by-hiring: How do rival firms learn from focal firm's hiring," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(2).
    10. Guoqiang Liang & Haiyan Hou & Qiao Chen & Zhigang Hu, 2020. "Diffusion and adoption: an explanatory model of “question mark” and “rising star” articles," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(1), pages 219-232, July.
    11. Xu, Ran & Baghaei Lakeh, Arash & Ghaffarzadegan, Navid, 2021. "Examining the characteristics of impactful research topics: A case of three decades of HIV-AIDS research," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(1).
    12. Chen, Qian & Magnusson, Mats & Björk, Jennie, 2023. "Selection bias of ideas for sustainability-oriented innovation in internal crowdsourcing," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    13. Li, Xin & Wen, Yang & Jiang, Jiaojiao & Daim, Tugrul & Huang, Lucheng, 2022. "Identifying potential breakthrough research: A machine learning method using scientific papers and Twitter data," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    14. Ke, Qing, 2020. "The citation disadvantage of clinical research," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1).
    15. Liu, Meijun & Jaiswal, Ajay & Bu, Yi & Min, Chao & Yang, Sijie & Liu, Zhibo & Acuña, Daniel & Ding, Ying, 2022. "Team formation and team impact: The balance between team freshness and repeat collaboration," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(4).
    16. Llopis, Oscar & D'Este, Pablo & McKelvey, Maureen & Yegros, Alfredo, 2022. "Navigating multiple logics: Legitimacy and the quest for societal impact in science," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Belkhouja, Mustapha & Fattoum, Senda & Yoon, Hyungseok (David), 2021. "Does greater diversification increase individual productivity? The moderating effect of attention allocation," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(6).
    2. Sen Chai, 2017. "Near Misses in the Breakthrough Discovery Process," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 28(3), pages 411-428, June.
    3. Banal-Estañol, Albert & Macho-Stadler, Inés & Pérez-Castrillo, David, 2019. "Evaluation in research funding agencies: Are structurally diverse teams biased against?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(7), pages 1823-1840.
    4. Hoppmann, Joern & Wu, Geng & Johnson, Jillian, 2021. "The impact of demand-pull and technology-push policies on firms’ knowledge search," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    5. Albert Banal-Estañol & Ines Macho-Stadler & David Pérez-Castrillo, 2016. "Key Success Drivers in Public Research Grants: Funding the Seeds of Radical Innovation in Academia?," CESifo Working Paper Series 5852, CESifo.
    6. Dongqing Lyu & Kaile Gong & Xuanmin Ruan & Ying Cheng & Jiang Li, 2021. "Does research collaboration influence the “disruption” of articles? Evidence from neurosciences," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(1), pages 287-303, January.
    7. Bercovitz, Janet & Feldman, Maryann, 2011. "The mechanisms of collaboration in inventive teams: Composition, social networks, and geography," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 81-93, February.
    8. Jiao, Hao & Wang, Tang & Yang, Jifeng, 2022. "Team structure and invention impact under high knowledge diversity: An empirical examination of computer workstation industry," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    9. Pierre Pelletier & Kevin Wirtz, 2023. "Sails and Anchors: The Complementarity of Exploratory and Exploitative Scientists in Knowledge Creation," Papers 2312.10476, arXiv.org.
    10. Lee, Kyung Yul & Jung, Hyun Ju & Kwon, Youngsun, 2024. "Boundary-spanning technology search, product component reuse, and new product innovation: Evidence from the smartphone industry," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(4).
    11. Michaël Bikard, 2018. "Made in Academia: The Effect of Institutional Origin on Inventors’ Attention to Science," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 29(5), pages 818-836, October.
    12. Hohberger, Jan, 2016. "Does it pay to stand on the shoulders of giants? An analysis of the inventions of star inventors in the biotechnology sector," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 682-698.
    13. Ke, Qing, 2020. "Technological impact of biomedical research: The role of basicness and novelty," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(7).
    14. Sam Arts & Lee Fleming, 2018. "Paradise of Novelty—Or Loss of Human Capital? Exploring New Fields and Inventive Output," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 29(6), pages 1074-1092, December.
    15. Jacqueline N. Lane & Ina Ganguli & Patrick Gaule & Eva Guinan & Karim R. Lakhani, 2021. "Engineering serendipity: When does knowledge sharing lead to knowledge production?," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(6), pages 1215-1244, June.
    16. Leone, Maria Isabella & Messeni Petruzzelli, Antonio & Natalicchio, Angelo, 2022. "Boundary spanning through external technology acquisition: The moderating role of star scientists and upstream alliances," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    17. Nicolas Carayol, 2016. "The Right Job and the Job Right: Novelty, Impact and Journal Stratification in Science," Post-Print hal-02274661, HAL.
    18. Keyvan Vakili & Sarah Kaplan, 2021. "Organizing for innovation: A contingency view on innovative team configuration," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(6), pages 1159-1183, June.
    19. Sarah Kaplan & Keyvan Vakili, 2015. "The double-edged sword of recombination in breakthrough innovation," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(10), pages 1435-1457, October.
    20. Shinkle, George A. & Hodgkinson, Gerard P. & Gary, Michael Shayne, 2021. "Government policy changes and organizational goal setting: Extensions to the behavioral theory of the firm," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 406-417.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:respol:v:48:y:2019:i:3:p:733-747. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/respol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.