The innovator's balance between academic social capital and disruptive innovation

IF 6.9 1区管理学 Q1 COMPUTER SCIENCE, INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Information Processing & Management Pub Date : 2025-09-03 DOI:10.1016/j.ipm.2025.104382

Xingpeng Liu, Jianlin Zhou, An Zeng, Xiaohua Cui

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Disruptive innovation, which plays an essential role in advancing scientific research by expanding the frontiers of human knowledge, has experienced a sustained decline, yet consensus on its causes remains elusive. Drawing on co-authorship networks derived from 647,218 publications by 307,460 researchers in the American Physical Society (APS) dataset (1893–2020), our social capital-based approach reveals an increasing dependence of scientific research on social capital and its progressive concentration within scientific elites. The encouraging finding is the observed decrease in the assortativity of the collaboration networks, suggesting the improving access to academic social resources for newcomers. However, the disruptiveness of collaborations between new and established researchers falls short of expectations. The superior performance of newcomer researchers in disruptive innovation compared to their senior counterparts, coupled with the inherent trade-off between innovativeness and peer acknowledgment, highlights a fundamental dilemma for young researchers: they must strive to balance leveraging academic social resources and maintaining disruptive innovation. And their adherence to authoritative collaborators might be one of the key determinants in the decline of disruptive innovation.

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创新者在学术社会资本与颠覆性创新之间的平衡

颠覆性创新通过拓展人类知识的疆界，在推动科学研究方面发挥着至关重要的作用，但它经历了持续的衰退，但对其原因的共识仍然难以捉摸。利用美国物理学会（APS）数据集（1893-2020）中307,460名研究人员的647,218份出版物的合著者网络，我们基于社会资本的方法揭示了科学研究对社会资本的日益依赖及其在科学精英中的逐渐集中。令人鼓舞的发现是，合作网络的分类性有所下降，这表明新来者获得学术社会资源的机会有所改善。然而，新老研究人员之间合作的破坏性没有达到预期。新人在颠覆性创新中的优异表现，再加上创新与同行认可之间的内在权衡，凸显了青年研究人员面临的一个根本困境：他们必须努力平衡利用学术社会资源和保持颠覆性创新。他们对权威合作者的坚持可能是破坏性创新衰落的关键决定因素之一。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Information Processing & Management 工程技术-计算机：信息系统

CiteScore

17.00

自引率

11.60%

发文量

276

审稿时长

39 days

期刊介绍： Information Processing and Management is dedicated to publishing cutting-edge original research at the convergence of computing and information science. Our scope encompasses theory, methods, and applications across various domains, including advertising, business, health, information science, information technology marketing, and social computing. We aim to cater to the interests of both primary researchers and practitioners by offering an effective platform for the timely dissemination of advanced and topical issues in this interdisciplinary field. The journal places particular emphasis on original research articles, research survey articles, research method articles, and articles addressing critical applications of research. Join us in advancing knowledge and innovation at the intersection of computing and information science.