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The double‐edged sword of recombination in breakthrough innovation
Author(s) -
Kaplan Sarah,
Vakili Keyvan
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
strategic management journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 11.035
H-Index - 286
eISSN - 1097-0266
pISSN - 0143-2095
DOI - 10.1002/smj.2294
Subject(s) - sword , novelty , creativity , value (mathematics) , realization (probability) , recombination , domain (mathematical analysis) , product (mathematics) , computer science , political science , psychology , mathematics , law , social psychology , world wide web , machine learning , biochemistry , chemistry , gene , mathematical analysis , statistics , geometry
We explore the double‐edged sword of recombination in generating breakthrough innovation: recombination of distant or diverse knowledge is needed because knowledge in a narrow domain might trigger myopia, but recombination can be counterproductive when local search is needed to identify anomalies. We take into account how creativity shapes both the cognitive novelty of the idea and the subsequent realization of economic value. We develop a text‐based measure of novel ideas in patents using topic modeling to identify those patents that originate new topics in a body of knowledge. We find that, counter to theories of recombination, patents that originate new topics are more likely to be associated with local search, while economic value is the product of broader recombinations as well as novelty . Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.