Scientists and inventors around the world are more plentiful and interconnected today than ever before. But while there are more people making discoveries, and more ideas that can be reconfigured in novel ways, research suggests that new ideas are getting harder to find-contradicting recombinant growth theory. In this paper, we shed new light on this apparent puzzle. Analyzing 20 million research articles and 4 million patent applications across the globe over the past half-century, we begin by documenting the rise of remote collaboration across cities, underlining the growing interconnectedness of scientists and inventors globally. We further show that across all fields, periods, and team sizes, researchers in these remote teams are consistently less likely to make breakthrough discoveries relative to their onsite counterparts. Using novel datasets that allow us to explore the division of labor within teams and across space, we find that among distributed team members, collaboration centers on late-stage, technical tasks, like collecting and analyzing data. Yet they are less likely to join forces in conceptual tasks, such as conceiving new ideas and designing research. We conclude that despite striking improvements in digital technology in recent years, remote teams are less likely to integrate the knowledge of their members to produce new, disruptive ideas.

翻译：全球科学家与发明家数量空前增长，彼此间联系也愈发紧密。然而，尽管从事发现的研究者人数更多、可重组为新组合的创意也更为丰富，研究表明创新正愈发困难——这与重组增长理论相矛盾。本文为这一看似矛盾的谜题提供了新视角。通过分析过去半个世纪全球两千万篇研究论文和四百万项专利申请，我们首先揭示了跨城市远程协作的兴起，突显全球科研人员与发明家日益增强的互联性。进一步发现，无论学科、时期或团队规模，远程团队研究者取得突破性发现的概率始终低于本地团队。利用可解析团队内部分工与空间分布的新型数据集，我们发现分布式团队成员主要聚焦于数据收集与分析等后期技术性任务，而在构思新想法、设计研究等概念性工作中合作较少。据此我们认为，尽管近年来数字技术取得显著进步，远程团队仍难以有效整合成员知识以催生颠覆性创新。