The Innovative Distinctiveness of Prizewinners and their Networks
Chaolin Tian, Yurui Huang, Ching Jin, Yifang Ma, Brian Uzzi

TL;DR
This study reveals that science prizewinners are more innovative than their peers, especially in the years leading up to the award, and that their collaborative networks are more diverse and interdisciplinary, impacting scientific progress.
Contribution
It provides the first comprehensive analysis linking prizewinning, innovation, and network structures across a large global dataset.
Findings
Prizewinners are more innovative in combining ideas and interdisciplinary work.
Innovative differences emerge about five years before the prize and persist afterward.
Prizewinners' collaborations are shorter, broader, and less overlapping in networks.
Abstract
Science prizes purportedly reward innovation and explorations of new phenomena. Yet, in practice prizes may inadvertently divert resources from similarly impactful but less celebrated scholars. Despite this paradox, knowledge of how prizewinning relates to innovation is nascent even as prizes proliferate widely. Analyzing 2,460 worldwide prizes, we compared the innovativeness of over 23,000 prizewinners and matched non-prizewinners whose performance records were statistically equivalent up to the prize year. First, we find that prizewinners are more innovative. Their research is more likely to combine existing ideas in new ways, integrate a topic's historical and contemporary thinking, and incorporate interdisciplinary perspectives. Second, although prizewinners and matched non-prizewinners have statistically equivalent impact and productivity records up to the prize year, at about five…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
Taxonomy
TopicsInterdisciplinary Research and Collaboration · Cognitive Science and Mapping · Genetics, Bioinformatics, and Biomedical Research
