Atypical Combinations and Scientific Impact

Making an Impact How big a role do unconventional combinations of existing knowledge play in the impact of a scientific paper? To examine this question, Uzzi et al. (p. 468 ) studied 17.9 million research articles across five decades of the Web of Science, the largest repository of scientific research. Scientific work typically appeared to draw on highly conventional, familiar mixtures of knowledge. The highest-impact papers were not the ones...