Top scientists may improve their chances of producing breakthrough discoveries by changing where they work—or by dividing their time between multiple locations—according to a new study published in the International Economic Review. The research found that Nobel Prize winners who moved to new locations more frequently began their prize-winning work nearly two years earlier than those who stayed put, while those who held multiple affiliations at the same time started their influential research even earlier.
While past research has shown that working alongside high-quality colleagues can improve productivity, the new study focuses on a different kind of interaction: the creative spark that comes from encountering unfamiliar ideas. The authors propose that being exposed to a wider variety of viewpoints, theories, and methods helps researchers generate novel combinations of knowledge—a process they describe as “recombinant innovation.”
“There is considerable interest in where vital, new ideas originate. Most of it focuses on being at the same institution as other innovators. We thought it would be interesting to look not just at being around other important innovators, but also at the changes and unique mixes of colleagues,” explained study authors Bruce A. Weinberg, the Eric Byron Fix-Monda Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at The Ohio State University, and John C. Ham, a professor of economics at NYU Abu Dhabi and Global Network Professor of Economics at the NYU Wagner School of Public Service.
To explore this idea, the researchers examined the detailed career histories of 488 recipients of the Nobel Prize in chemistry, medicine, and physics, spanning from 1901 to 2003. The study focused on the time interval between when these scientists began their careers and when they started the line of research that ultimately led to their Nobel Prize. Importantly, the authors used biographical information, committee statements, and autobiographies to identify when each scientist began their prize-winning research—not when they won the prize, which often happens many years later.
The researchers looked closely at two patterns: whether the laureates moved to a new location during their careers, and whether they held appointments in more than one place at the same time. A “new location” was defined as a place the scientist hadn’t worked in for at least five years, while “multiple locations” referred to any year in which the scientist spent significant time in more than one place. These movements were tracked year by year across the scientists’ careers and combined with other data such as the quality of colleagues and the scientist’s field of research.
To make their estimates, the authors built a statistical model that calculated the likelihood of starting prize-winning work at any given point in a scientist’s career, while accounting for other influences like field, time period, and the presence of other highly accomplished scientists in the same city. This approach allowed them to compare the average time it took to begin Nobel work under different scenarios—such as moving frequently versus staying in one location, or working across multiple institutions versus staying at just one.
Weinberg and Ham found that scientists who moved to a new location every two years began their Nobel-worthy research an average of 2.6 years earlier than those who never moved. Those who moved every three years started 1.9 years earlier, while those who moved every five years started nearly one year earlier. Working across multiple locations had an even stronger relationship: scientists who were always in multiple locations began their breakthrough research about 2.6 years earlier, on average, than those who consistently worked in a single location.
To put these numbers in perspective, the average Nobel laureate in the sample took about 10.5 years from the start of their career to the beginning of their prize-winning work. Shaving two or more years off that timeline represents a meaningful shift, especially considering that the laureates already belong to the most elite group of scientists.
The study also provided a broader picture of how scientific careers have evolved over the past century. The average time to begin Nobel-worthy research varied somewhat across disciplines and time periods.
For example, physicists who graduated before 1918 took around 11.3 years to begin their prize-winning work, while those who graduated after 1945 took closer to 9.4 years. In medicine, the average time to begin dropped from about 9.9 years in earlier cohorts to 7.6 years in more recent ones. The data also reflected larger historical shifts, such as the growing dominance of the United States as a home for top scientists, especially after the Second World War.
Most Nobel laureates spent the majority of their careers in a single location. But the periods leading up to their most important work were more likely to involve change. In the years just before starting their Nobel work, about 10% of laureates were in a new location, and 13% were in both a new and multiple locations. That share rose to 21% in the year they began their breakthrough research, before dropping sharply afterward. These patterns suggest that new environments may be especially helpful at the outset of an innovative project.
The study builds on a broader body of research about knowledge spillovers and how ideas travel. Traditional models have emphasized clustering—bringing top researchers together in physical spaces such as academic departments or research institutes. But this new research suggests that movement between different environments, and exposure to a wider mix of perspectives, may be just as important for sparking breakthroughs.
“If our results also apply to high-quality scientists, as opposed to laureates, from a policy perspective, we believe it suggests that cross-pollination has significant value, exposing people to ideas they might not otherwise encounter,” Weinberg and Ham told PsyPost.
“From a personal-interest angle, readers may want to try to expose themselves to ideas or people they don’t usually encounter. Individual scholars should aim to visit other campuses via sabbaticals, for example. To their universities, having faculty on leave is likely a mixed blessing, as these faculty members will increase their visibility, making them more attractive to other schools, while also raising their productivity.”
“We also believe that our study demonstrates the value of sophisticated statistical work, as we were dealing with a highly non-random sample of exceptionally talented scientists,” the researchers said.
Although the researchers accounted for several potential confounding factors—such as the quality of colleagues or early career advantages—they acknowledge that the study is not designed to prove that moving causes earlier innovation. It is possible, for instance, that more ambitious or productive scientists are more likely to seek out multiple appointments or relocate frequently.
However, the authors argue that their focus on Nobel laureates helps reduce this concern, since all individuals in the sample were already exceptionally successful. Moreover, they note that while the effects may not generalize to all scientists, they appear meaningful among those working at the very highest levels.
“We think that the impact of moving to new places or working across multiple locations is impressive even after accounting for the number of other innovators that people are around—it really suggests that exposure to new ideas and novel combinations of ideas has a huge benefit,” Weinberg and Ham said.
The authors highlight that their approach differs from earlier studies that looked at the influence of colleagues on publication counts or immediate research output. Instead, they focus on the timing of major discoveries, using the Nobel Prize as a retrospective indicator of scientific significance. Their method captures how combining different ideas—often from different fields or institutions—can lead to unusually creative or high-impact outcomes.
There are limitations to the study. The data set is restricted to Nobel Prize winners, which may not reflect patterns among the broader scientific community. The definitions of “new” and “multiple” locations, while carefully selected, are still approximations. The measure of colleague quality is also somewhat indirect, relying on the number of future laureates in a given city. And while the researchers attempted to control for differences in ability and background, unmeasured factors could still play a role.
“This is a single study,” Weinberg and Ham noted. “We are using historical data, which could be a strength—because it isn’t about one episode—but things may have changed with the internet, for instance. We also want to be circumspect in extrapolating to different groups. That is, the study may well be valid for the group that it studies—Nobel laureates—but people may want to be cautious applying it more generally. We would like to apply our model to a group of scientists who are not as elite as laureates. The problem here is a lack of data for doing this.”
“Bruce is currently using natural language processing to identify important new ideas and see how they move around in networks of innovators,” the researchers added. “It seems valuable to trace the actual flows of ideas. John is continuing to work on statistical models that will let us analyze data sets with less standard sampling schemes.”
The study, “Recombinant Innovation, Novel Ideas, and the Start of Nobel Prize–Winning Work,” was authored by John C. Ham, Brian Quistorff, and Bruce A. Weinberg.