Making The Best Idea Better: The Role of Idea Pool Structure

In any pool of ideas that is developed in a multistage process, it is often the case that only a small fraction of top ideas are exceptional. This study formulates a model of multistage development of idea pools, and examines the impact of the “structure” of idea pools and of learning across stages on the extent to which the top ideas in the pool are exceptional. Our key descriptive results demonstrate that the dispersion of ideas in the pool...