Disrupting science: How remote collaboration impacts innovation

This article was published in VoxEU.org on 6th May 2022. 

Face-to-face interactions are critical for the cross-fertilisation of ideas. Yet, the share of geographically distributed teams in scientific research has steadily risen since the 1960s and accelerated with the ICT revolution of the 1990s. This column explores how the rise of remote collaboration has shaped disruptive discoveries in science between 1961 and 2020. Remote collaboration negatively impacted breakthrough discoveries, but the effect reversed after 2010, likely due to improvements in technologies that support effective remote collaboration at distance.

The authors’ study findings suggest that harnessing the benefits of the ICT revolution for remote collaboration required complementary investments in technologies that support remote work. The COVID-19 pandemic has sparked a marked acceleration in patenting related to remote work technologies. It might well also spark a revival of disruptive science and faster productivity growth.

Read the full article here.

Authored by: Carl Benedikt Frey, Giorgio Presidente.