Engineering Serendipity: The Role of Cognitive Similarity in Knowledge Sharing and Knowledge Production

Jacqueline Lane,Ina Ganguli,Karim R Lakhani,Eva Guinan,Patrick Gaule

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3487999

Abstract

We investigate how knowledge similarity between two individuals is systematically related to the likelihood that a serendipitous encounter results in knowledge production. We conduct a natural field experiment at a medical research symposium, where we exogenously varied opportunities for face-to-face encounters among 15,817 scientist-pairs. Our data include direct observations of interaction patterns collected using sociometric badges, and detailed, longitudinal data on the scientists’ post-symposium publication records over six years. We find that interacting scientists acquire and create more knowledge when they share some overlapping research interests, but are less likely to cite each other’s work when they are from similar fields. Our findings reveal both collaborative and competitive effects of knowledge similarity on knowledge production outcomes.

Highlights

In 2005, Robert Havekes, a graduate student in neuroscience, and Peter Meerlo, a postdoctoral fellow researching sleep, encountered each other by chance at their department’s coffee machine
Examining Models 7–8, which are the full models with both interaction terms, we observe that knowledge-sharing partners with moderate intellectual similarity transferred roughly 0.39 percent more Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) terms when assigned to the same room, and transferred roughly 3.62 percent more MeSH terms when they had engaged in face-to-face communication
Taking the view that learning is accretive and that an individual’s ability to learn new ideas and concepts is dependent on their prior knowledge and experiences (Hilgard and Bower, 1981), we systematically examined how the degree of cognitive similarity between organizational members impacts the likelihood that knowledge sharing enhances knowledge production

Summary

Introduction

In 2005, Robert Havekes, a graduate student in neuroscience, and Peter Meerlo, a postdoctoral fellow researching sleep, encountered each other by chance at their department’s coffee machine. The two budding scientists discussed how they could bring their complementary research interests together. Since that day, both researchers have gone on to become professors and directors of their own labs. Both researchers have gone on to become professors and directors of their own labs Their serendipitous encounter has led to a productive research collaboration, with 15 joint publications resulting in roughly 650 citations.. After Earnshaw serendipitously attended a talk in which Dekker and Mirny presented their joint work on mitotic chromosomes, he became convinced that his lab could provide bench methods to improve Dekker and Mirny’s computational models. Earnshaw approached the two collaborators after the talk; their conversation evolved into a three-lab collaboration and a 2018 publication in Science (Pain, 2018)

Methods

Results

Conclusion