Liquidity Spark Genius: How to Change Locations Accelerate Nobel’s Ideas

According to research published yesterday in the International Economic Review, moving to a new place or splitting between multiple locations could scrape off several years of groundbreaking scientific work.

Research on Nobel Prize winners shows that more frequently relocated winners begin winning two years before their more fixed peers. Those who work in multiple locations have started 2.6 years of innovative work at the same time.

“They heard interesting ideas in one place and different ideas in another,” said Bruce Weinberg, a professor of economics at Ohio State University and co-author of the study. “If they stayed in one place, it would take longer to happen or not to happen at all.”

While previous research has focused on the benefits of scientific clusters such as Silicon Valley, this study suggests that movement between centers of excellence may be equally valuable.

“You can be with a lot of outstanding people, but after a while you’ve talked to everyone and have a shared understanding of how things work,” Weinberg explained. “Unless you’re exposed to new ideas you’ve never heard of before, you’re unlikely to come up with this great breakthrough.”

Researchers, including John Ham of New York University in Abu Dhabi and Brian Quistorff of the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, analyzed data from Nobel Prize winners in the fields of chemistry, medicine, and physics from 1901 to 2003. They tracked when and when these great thinking worked, and when they began to research research that ultimately won scientific honors.

For some scientists, the road to Nobel’s work began early—about 5% to 10% of winners began their award-winning research in the first year of their career. But many people have spent decades starting the most important work, some waiting for 30 or even 40 years.

Analysis shows that moving to a new location every two years can reduce the time before starting the Nobel Prize bonus for two years. Even if the relocation shows profits every five years, the waiting period is reduced by 0.7 years.

“For someone who might have spent 10 years starting the reward research, if they stay in a place, moving every two years can be reduced by nearly a quarter. This is basically accelerating their innovation.”

Research shows the potential benefits of academic leave, which gives researchers the opportunity to work in new environments. Although the study specifically looks at Nobel Prize winners, the researchers believe their findings may apply to many other creative areas.

“Many scientists work the same way as the chemistry, medicine and physics researchers we study. They can benefit by moving to new places and being treated with new ideas,” Weinberg said. “I think great painters and artists and anyone in the creative field can even be like this – their genius comes up with novel ideas and express them in novel ways.”

The researchers also speculated that, in addition to meeting new people, simple behavior in a new environment may inspire creativity, although this study does not directly address this issue.

“Entering a completely different environment, a new environment, may help creative people think in new ways,” Weinberg suggests.

Interestingly, the average time taken to start the award-winning work throughout the study period was still very consistent and similar in all three scientific disciplines studied.

In today’s increasingly connected world, remote work and international collaboration are more common than ever, and these findings suggest that physically changing the surrounding environment (rather than actually being connected) may bring meaningful benefits to scientific innovation.

The study was supported by several organizations, including the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Aging, the Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research, the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the John Templeton, Ewing Marion Kaufman and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.