Unraveling the bias against novelty: guiding the study of our tendency to desire but reject the new

Decision-makers, those responsible for determining which ideas remain in an organization, reject novel ideas even when novelty is desired. This chapter reviews emerging research on the bias against novelty and outlines two approaches to studying the bias. People tend to reject novel ideas when there is a tension between novelty and the predictability of idea use. Decision-makers who are responsible for making correct decisions during the early phases of idea evaluation experience most tension and thus are most likely to reject novel ideas. Most research to date has taken an outcome-based approach, examining whether a given decision to reject a novel idea was biased. To understand how people may overcome a bias against novelty, a process-based approach is needed to examine when and why people reject novel ideas, as well as the practices decision-makers enact to evaluate ideas. Recommendations for future research to study the processes of evaluation are discussed.