A recent study finds that relocating or working in multiple locations can significantly boost creativity and accelerate the start of Nobel Prize-winning work. By exposing themselves to new ideas and environments, scientists can jumpstart their innovative processes and achieve remarkable breakthroughs more quickly.
If you want to spark creativity, a change of scenery may be your best bet, according to a groundbreaking study focusing on Nobel Prize winners. The research found that frequent relocations and working in multiple locations can significantly speed up the onset of award-winning work.
The study, published in the International Economic Review, reveals that Nobel laureates who moved more often began their prize-winning projects up to two years earlier than those who stayed put. Additionally, laureates who divided their time between different locations started their innovative work up to 2.6 years sooner compared to those who remained in a single setting.
Co-author Bruce Weinberg, a professor of economics at The Ohio State University, explained that changing locations exposes researchers to diverse ideas and methodologies that can be synthesized into groundbreaking innovations.
“They’re hearing interesting ideas at one place and different ideas at another location. They are putting these things together in novel, important ways,” Weinberg said in a news release. “If they stayed in one place, it would take much longer to happen or may not happen at all.”
The research was a collaborative effort with John Ham, a professor of economics at New York University in Abu Dhabi, and Brian Quistorff from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.
The findings were derived from a unique dataset tracking Nobel laureates in chemistry, medicine and physics from 1901 to 2003, providing insights into when each laureate started the research that earned them the Nobel Prize.
Unlike previous studies that focused on the benefits of research clusters, such as those in Silicon Valley or Cambridge, this study emphasizes the advantages of mobility.
“You can be in one place with lots of brilliant people, but after a while, you’ve talked to all of them and you develop a common understanding of how things work,” Weinberg added. “You’re less likely to come up with this great breakthrough unless you are exposed to a new set of ideas you haven’t heard before. You can do that by moving or working in several locations.”
The results also showed varying impacts based on the frequency of relocation.
Moving to a different setting every two years cut down the time to start Nobel-winning work by two years, while a move every five years reduced the time by 0.7 years.
Working in multiple locations — such as alternating between a university and a research facility — reduced this period by 2.6 years.
Weinberg acknowledged that uprooting one’s life and lab isn’t an easy task but stressed its profound impact on research productivity.
“It’s not easy for a scientist to move their lab and work to a new location, but it can substantially boost their research,” he added.
Moreover, the study found consistent trends across different time periods and fields of science, underscoring the importance of diverse input in fostering innovation.
Weinberg also suggested that structured programs like academic sabbaticals could facilitate this type of productivity boost.
“For someone who might have taken 10 years to begin their prizewinning research if they stayed in one place, moving every two years could reduce that time by nearly a quarter. That is substantially accelerating their innovations,” he added.
While the study focused exclusively on Nobel Prize recipients in specific fields, the implications may extend to other disciplines requiring creativity.
“Many scientists work the same way as our study’s chemistry, medicine and physics researchers. They can benefit by moving to new places and being exposed to new ideas,” added Weinberg. “I think the same might even be true of great painters and artists and anyone in a creative domain — their genius is coming up with novel ideas and expressing them in novel ways. And it helps to move and meet others with different ideas.”
The research raises fascinating questions about the broader impact of environmental change on creativity.
“Going off into a completely different environment, a new context, might help creative people think in new ways,” Weinberg added, though the study mainly attributed creativity boosts to the mingling of new ideas rather than merely the change in location.
“You’re more likely to come up with that great new idea if you move around, meet new people, have new experiences, encounter new ways of thinking,” concluded Weinberg.
Source: The Ohio State University