COLUMBUS, Ohio – If you want to do your best, most creative work, moving to a new place – or working from several places – can accelerate the process, according to a new study of Nobel Prize winners.
Researchers found that Nobel laureates who moved more frequently began their prize-winning work up to 2 years earlier than did laureates who never moved. Those who worked in multiple locations started their innovative work up to 2.6 years earlier.
Top scientists who change their locations or split their time between locations boost their career by meeting other researchers with new and different ideas that they can combine with their own, said Bruce Weinberg, co-author of the study and professor of economics at The Ohio State University.
“They’re hearing interesting ideas at one place and different ideas at another location. They are putting these things together in novel, important ways,” Weinberg said.
“If they stayed in one place, it would take much longer to happen or may not happen at all.”
Weinberg conducted the study with John Ham, a professor of economics at New York University in Abu Dhabi, and Brian Quistorff of the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. The study was published today (May 12, 2025) in the journal International Economic Review.
Other research has focused on the importance of having clusters of top scientists at places like Silicon Valley or Cambridge, Massachusetts, to generate “knowledge spillovers” among a community of researchers who use what they learn from each other to advance science.
But this study takes a different approach, Weinberg said.
“You can be in one place with lots of brilliant people, but after a while, you’ve talked to all of them and you develop a common understanding of how things work,” he said.
“You’re less likely to come up with this great breakthrough unless you are exposed to a new set of ideas you haven’t heard before. You can do that by moving or working in several locations.”
The researchers used a rich dataset they helped build on Nobel laureates in chemistry, medicine and physics from 1901 to 2003. The dataset has the laureates’ locations each year and when each scientist started the research that eventually won them the Nobel prize.
The study findings estimated that moving to a new location every two years significantly decreases the time before beginning Nobel-prize winning work by two years. Moving every five years reduces the time by 0.7 years.
Being in multiple locations, as opposed to always being in one location, reduced the expected time before beginning Nobel-prize work by 2.6 years.
Being in multiple locations could include, for example, physicists who spent part of the time at their university, and substantial time at a research facility such as CERN.
The findings showed that 5% to 10% of the sample begin their Nobel work in the first year of their careers. However, many people take 10 or 20 years to start their Nobel work, and some take 30 or even 40 years.
“It’s not easy for a scientist to move their lab and work to a new location, but it can substantially boost their research,” Weinberg said.
The average time taken to start the prize-winning work remained remarkably constant from 1901 to 2003 and was constant across chemistry, medicine, and physics.
Sabbaticals for academics offer the possibility of being in new or multiple locations. Estimating the impact that having a sabbatical has on a researcher's output would be interesting, the researchers said.
“For someone who might have taken 10 years to begin their prizewinning research if they stayed in one place, moving every two years could reduce that time by nearly a quarter. That is substantially accelerating their innovations,” Weinberg said.
He emphasized that this study only examined a specific subset of Nobel Prize winners. However, he said the findings could well apply to other scientists in fields where creativity is needed to succeed.
“Many scientists work the same way as our study's chemistry, medicine, and physics researchers. They can benefit by moving to new places and being exposed to new ideas,” Weinberg said.
“I think the same might even be true of great painters and artists and anyone in a creative domain – their genius is coming up with novel ideas and expressing them in novel ways. And it helps to move and meet others with different ideas.”
He said it is also possible that being in a new place can inspire creativity beyond the effects of meeting new people, although this study can’t address that question.
“Going off into a completely different environment, a new context, might help creative people think in new ways,” Weinberg said.
However, the study clarifies that moving or working in different places is the key.
“You’re more likely to come up with that great new idea if you move around, meet new people, have new experiences, encounter new ways of thinking,” Weinberg said.
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute on Aging, the Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research, the National Bureau of Economic Research and the John Templeton, Ewing Marion Kauffman, and Alfred P. Sloan Foundations.
Journal
International Economic Review
Method of Research
Data/statistical analysis
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
Recombinant Innovation, Novel Ideas, and the Start of Nobel Prize–Winning Work
Article Publication Date
12-May-2025
