ArticleNature communications2017
Serendipity and strategy in rapid innovation.
Article in Nature communications, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- The dynamics of higher-order novelties.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Conceptual structure and the growth of scientific knowledge.Nature human behaviour · 2024Article
- Idea engines: Unifying innovation & obsolescence from markets & genetic evolution to science.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Generative AI in scientific publishing: disruptive or destructive?Nature reviews. Urology · 2024Article
- Interacting innovation processes.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Innovation in crisis: The role of 'exaptive relations' for medical device development in response to COVID-19.Technological forecasting and social change · 2022Article
- Explosive and implosive root concepts: An analysis of music moods rooted by two influential rap artists.PloS one · 2022Article
- Twitter as an innovation process with damping effect.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Encouraging Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration and Innovation in Epidemiology in Japan.Frontiers in public health · 2021Article
- Efficient team structures in an open-ended cooperative creativity experiment.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
- How much can we influence the rate of innovation?Science advances · 2019Article
- Optimal diversification strategies in the networks of related products and of related research areas.Nature communications · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Innovation is to organizations what evolution is to organisms: it is how organizations adapt to environmental change and improve. Yet despite advances in our understanding of evolution, what drives innovation remains elusive. On the one hand, organizations invest heavily in systematic strategies to accelerate innovation. On the other, historical analysis and individual experience suggest that serendipity plays a significant role. To unify these perspectives, we analysed the mathematics of innovation as a search for designs across a universe of component building blocks. We tested our insights using data from language, gastronomy and technology. By measuring the number of makeable designs as we acquire components, we observed that the relative usefulness of different components can cross over time. When these crossovers are unanticipated, they appear to be the result of serendipity. But when we can predict crossovers in advance, they offer opportunities to strategically increase the growth of the product space.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.