 Scaling of Atypical Knowledge Combinations in American Metropolitan Areas from 1836 to 2010Lars Mewes Economic Geography, 2019, vol. 95, issue 4, 341-361 Abstract: Cities are epicenters for invention. Scaling analyses have verified the productivity of cities and demonstrate a superlinear relationship between cities’ population size and invention performance. However, little is known about what kinds of inventions correlate with city size. Is the productivity of cities only limited to invention quantity? I shift the focus on the quality of idea creation by investigating how cities influence the art of knowledge combinations. Atypical combinations introduce novel and unexpected linkages between knowledge domains. They express creativity in inventions and are particularly important for technological breakthroughs. My study of 174 years of invention history in metropolitan areas in the US reveals a superlinear scaling of atypical combinations with population size. The observed scaling grows over time indicating a geographic shift toward cities since the early twentieth century. The productivity of large cities is thus not only restricted to quantity but also includes quality in invention processes. Date: 2019 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:recgxx:v:95:y:2019:i:4:p:341-361 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1080/00130095.2019.1567261 Access Statistics for this article Economic Geography is currently edited by James Murphy More articles in Economic Geography from Taylor & Francis Journals |
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