ASONAM 2016 keynotes: Ideas and inventions.

Scienceu0027s knowledge base is expanding rapidly, but the breakthrough paper rate is narrowing and scientists take longer to make their first discoveries. Breakthroughs are related to how information is recombined, yet it remains unclear how scientists and inventors forage the knowledge base in search of tomorrowu0027s highest impact ideas. Studying 28 million scientific papers and 5 million U.S. patents, we uncover 2 major findings. First, we identify “Darwinu0027s Conjecture,” which reveals how conventional and novel ideas are balanced within breakthrough papers. Second, we find an “information hotspot.” The hotspot is that cluster of papers of a certain age distribution in the knowledge base that best predict tomorrowu0027s hits. Together, works that combine knowledge according to Darwinu0027s Conjecture or forage in the hotspot double their odds of being in the top 5% or better of citations. These patterns result in over 250 scientific and technology fields, are increasingly dominant, and outperform other predictors of impact, suggesting a universal link between the age of information and scientific discovery.