The social process of innovation: The role of novelty and social cues in idea evaluation

提出的研究项目旨在推动创新研究。我们希望促进对创新过程中一个重要但尚未得到充分研究的阶段的理解：对提出的创新想法进行评估。为了理解为什么一些想法获得支持，而另一些则得不到支持，我们将关注(1)想法新颖性的作用和(2)社会线索在想法评估过程中的作用。由于我们打算为管理者如何评估想法提供因果证据，我们将在两个组织内进行两次现场实验，员工产生创新想法，高级管理人员对其进行评估并决定其实施。我们的研究项目将结合定性和定量方法，分三个步骤进行。第一步是在两个组织内进行定性的预研究，我们将在其中进行实地实验。我们进行前期研究是为了更好地了解企业的创新过程，这将有助于我们设计有效和适当的实验干预措施。在第二步中，我们将收集员工的想法，并通过主题建模来衡量他们的新颖性；主题建模是一种源于计算机科学的文本分析方法，可以基于描述想法的实际文本来衡量想法新颖性。在第三步中，我们将进行现场实验，分析新颖性和社交线索在想法评估过程中的作用。为此，我们将试验性地改变管理者对所提出的想法进行评估的条件。尽管评估和选择想法已经成为成功创新的关键方面，但对想法评估过程的研究仍在发展中，远未完成。通过拟议的研究，我们试图推进关于三个账户的文献。首先，现场实验研究设计使我们能够提供关于想法新颖性和社会线索对想法评估的影响的因果证据。之前的大多数研究都是基于相关性提出的证据，因此没有达到这一“黄金标准”。其次，我们通过基于描述一个想法的实际文本来衡量想法新颖性，在方法论上做出了重要的贡献。早期的研究在很大程度上依赖于使用预先建立的图式(如专利类别)来衡量组合新颖性。相比之下，我们将使用主题建模来推导出基于内容的新颖性度量。第三，我们通过并行研究社会关系和内容的影响来推进创新研究。鉴于网络创新研究一直被批评为缺乏对内容的考虑，内容研究与社会结构脱节，我们寻求整合社会关系和内容。拟议的项目将推进关于想法新颖性和社会线索的理论，并将计算机科学的方法与支持因果推理的现场实验设计相结合，从而推动研究前沿。

The proposed research project seeks to push the study of innovation. We look to advance the understanding of an important, yet understudied, phase of the innovation process: the evaluation of ideas proposed for innovation. To understand why some ideas gain support while others do not, we will focus on (1) the role of idea novelty and (2) the role of social cues in the idea evaluation process. As we intend to provide causal evidence on how managers evaluate ideas, we will conduct two field experiments within two organizations where employees generate ideas for innovation and senior managers evaluate them and decide on their implementation.Our research project will combine qualitative and quantitative methods and will proceed in three steps. The first step is a qualitative pre-study within the two organizations in which we will conduct the field experiments. We conduct the pre-study to gain a better contextual understanding of the companies’ innovation processes, and it will help us to design effective and appropriate experimental interventions. In the second step, we will collect the employees’ ideas and measure their novelty by topic modeling; a text-analytic method stemming from computer science that can be used to measure idea novelty based on the actual text describing an idea. In the third step, we will conduct the field experiments that analyze the role of novelty and social cues in the idea evaluation process. To do so, we will experimentally vary the conditions under which managers evaluate the proposed ideas.While evaluating and selecting ideas has become a key aspect of successful innovation, research on the idea evaluation process is still developing and far from complete. With the proposed research we seek to advance the literature on three accounts. First, the field experimental research design enables us to provide causal evidence on the effect of idea novelty and social cues on idea evaluation. Most of prior research has presented evidence based on correlations and has thus fallen short of this “gold standard.” Second, we make an important methodological contribution by measuring idea novelty based on the actual text describing an idea. Earlier research has largely relied on measures of combinatorial novelty using pre-established schemata, such as patent classes. In contrast, we will employ topic modeling to derive a content-based novelty measure. Third, we advance innovation research by studying the impact of social relationships and content in parallel. Whereas network research on innovation has been criticized for lacking consideration for content, and content studies have been disconnected from social structure, we seek to integrate social relations and content.The proposed project will advance theory on idea novelty and social cues, and it will push the research frontier by combining methods from computer science with field experimental designs enabling causal inference.