Conferences are ubiquitous in many industries, but how effectively they diffuse ideas has been debated and the mechanisms of diffusion unclear. Conference attendees can adopt ideas from presentations they choose to see (direct effect) or see incidentally (serendipity effect). We quantify these direct and serendipitous effects of academic conference presentations on future citations by exploiting quasi-random scheduling conflicts. When multiple papers of interest to an attendee are presented at the same time, the person is less able to see them on average and, if seeing presentations is important, cites them less. We use data from Confer, a scheduling application deployed at 25 in-person computer science conferences that lets users Like papers and receive personalized schedules. Compared to timeslots with many conflicts, users cited Liked papers with no scheduling conflicts 52% more. Users also cited non-Liked papers in sessions with no conflicts 51% more, and this serendipitous diffusion accounted for 22% of the overall diffusion induced by presentations. The study shows that conference presentations stimulate substantial direct and serendipitous diffusion of ideas, and adds the analysis of scheduling conflicts to the toolkit of management scholars.

翻译：会议在各行业中普遍存在，但思想传播的有效性一直存在争议，且传播机制尚不明确。参会者可从自主选择参与的展示中采纳思想（直接效应），亦可通过偶然接触获取（偶遇效应）。我们利用准随机排期冲突，量化学术会议展示对未来引用的直接效应与偶然效应：当参会者感兴趣的多篇论文在同一时段展示时，其平均观览机会减少，若展示对引用至关重要，则相关论文被引频次降低。研究采用部署于25场计算机科学现场会议的排程应用Confer数据，该应用允许用户标记感兴趣论文并获取个性化日程。与冲突时段较多的论文相比，零排期冲突的标记论文引用量提高52%；用户对零冲突场次中未标记论文的引用量亦提升51%，这种偶遇式传播贡献了展示所引致总传播效能的22%。本研究证明，会议展示显著促进思想的直接传播与偶然传播，同时将排期冲突分析纳入管理学者的研究工具包。