{"id":204,"date":"2025-05-28T20:51:55","date_gmt":"2025-05-28T20:51:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/lish\/?page_id=204"},"modified":"2025-05-28T20:51:55","modified_gmt":"2025-05-28T20:51:55","slug":"engineering-serendipity-the-role-of-cognitive-similarity-in-knowledge-sharing-and-knowledge-production","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/lish\/research-tracks\/past-projects\/engineering-serendipity-the-role-of-cognitive-similarity-in-knowledge-sharing-and-knowledge-production\/","title":{"rendered":"Engineering Serendipity: The Role of Cognitive Similarity in Knowledge Sharing and Knowledge Production"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Led by LISH postdoctoral fellow Jacqueline Lane, this research paper explores how serendipitous encounters affected and even fostered innovation\u00a0and creativity among scientists. Taking 15,817 scientist pairs, LISH designed and executed a natural field experiment at a medical symposium. Researchers found that too much or too little intellectual similarity leads to few opportunities for sharing insight and knowledge. Physical space redesign can be temporarily rearranged to encourage knowledge sharing opportunities and new ideas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Led by LISH postdoctoral fellow Jacqueline Lane, this research paper explores how serendipitous encounters affected and even fostered innovation\u00a0and creativity among scientists. Taking 15,817 scientist pairs, LISH designed and executed a natural field experiment at a medical symposium. Researchers found that too much or too little intellectual similarity leads to few opportunities for sharing insight [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19383,"featured_media":0,"parent":188,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_trash_the_other_posts":false,"rkv_hide_featured_image":false,"rkv_hide_page_title":false,"rkv_hide_abstract_shapes":true,"rkv_reduce_header":false,"hbsd3_featured_media_url":"","hbsd3_featured_media_url_autoplay":false,"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"rkv-people-shadow":[],"class_list":["post-204","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Engineering Serendipity: The Role of Cognitive Similarity in Knowledge Sharing and Knowledge Production - Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/lish\/research-tracks\/past-projects\/engineering-serendipity-the-role-of-cognitive-similarity-in-knowledge-sharing-and-knowledge-production\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Engineering Serendipity: The Role of Cognitive Similarity in Knowledge Sharing and Knowledge Production - Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Led by LISH postdoctoral fellow Jacqueline Lane, this research paper explores how serendipitous encounters affected and even fostered innovation\u00a0and creativity among scientists. 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