Evidence for a creative dilemma posed by repeated collaborations

TL;DR

This study quantitatively confirms a creative dilemma in repeated collaborations, showing that while experience benefits teams, over-repetition can lead to decline, and proposes strategies to mitigate degeneration.

Contribution

It provides the first quantitative validation of the creative dilemma in repeated collaborations using patent data from Japan and the US.

Findings

Longer collaboration correlates with higher patent impact.

Impact of consecutive patents decreases after a major invention.

New teams have higher expected impact than past successful teams.

Abstract

We focused on how repeat collaborations in projects for inventions affect performance. Repeat collaborations have two contradictory aspects. A positive aspect is team development or experience, and a negative aspect is team degeneration or decline. Since both contradicting phenomena are observed, inventors have a dilemma as to whether they should keep collaborating in a team or not. The dilemma has not previously been quantitatively analyzed. We provide quantitative and extensive analyses of the dilemma in creative projects by using patent data from Japan and the United States. We confirm three predictions to quantitatively validate the existence of the dilemma. The first prediction is that the greater the patent a team achieves, the longer the team will work together. The second prediction is that the impact of consecutive patents decreases after a team makes a remarkable invention, which is measured by the impact of patents. The third prediction is that the expectation of impact with new teams is greater than that with the same teams successful in the past. We find these predictions are validated in patents published in Japan and the United States. On the basis of these three predictions, we can quantitatively validate the dilemma in creative projects. We also propose preventive strategies for degeneration. One is developing technological diversity, and another is developing inventor diversity in teams.We find the two strategies are both effective by validating with the data.