In today’s science and business worlds, it’s increasingly common to hear that solving big problems requires a big team. But a new analysis of more than 65 million papers, patents and software projects found that smaller teams produce much more disruptive and innovative research.
In a new paper published by Nature, University of Chicago researchers examined 60 years of publications and found that smaller teams were far more likely to introduce new ideas to science and technology, while larger teams more often developed and consolidated existing knowledge.