We report results of a natural field experiment conducted at a medical organization that sought contribution of public goods (i.e., projects for organizational improvement) from its 1200 employees. Offering a prize for winning submissions boosted participation by 85 percent without affecting the quality of the submissions. The effect was consistent across gender and job type. We posit that the allure of a prize, in combination with mission-oriented preferences, drove participation. Using a simple model, we estimate that these preferences explain about a third of the magnitude of the effect. We also find that these results were sensitive to the solicited person’s gender.

Scientists typically self-organize into teams, matching with others to collaborate in the production of new knowledge. We present the results of a field experiment conducted at Harvard Medical School to understand the extent to which search costs affect matching among scientific collaborators. We generated exogenous variation in search costs for pairs of potential collaborators by randomly assigning individuals to 90-minute structured information-sharing sessions as part of a grant funding opportunity for biomedical researchers. We estimate that the treatment increases the baseline probability of grant co-application of a given pair of researchers by 75% (increasing the likelihood of a pair collaborating from 0.16 percent to 0.28 percent), with effects higher among those in the same specialization. The findings indicate that matching between scientists is subject to considerable frictions, even in the case of geographically-proximate scientists working in the same institutional context with ample access to common information and funding opportunities.

Utilizing suggestions from clinicians and administrative staff is associated with process and quality improvement, organizational climate that promotes patient safety, and added capacity for learning. However, realizing improvement through innovative ideas from staff depends on their ability and decision to contribute. We hypothesized that staff perception of whether the organization promotes learning is positively associated with their likelihood to engage in problem solving and speaking up. We conducted our study in a cardiology unit in an academic hospital that hosted an ideation contest that solicited frontline staff to suggest ideas to resolve issues encountered at work. Our primary dependent variable was staff participation in ideation. The independent variables measuring perception of support for learning were collected using the validated 27-item Learning Organization Survey (LOS). To examine the relationships between these variables, we used analysis of variance, logistic regression, and predicted probabilities. We also interviewed 16 contest participants to explain our quantitative results. The study sample consisted of 30% of cardiology unit staff (n=354) that completed the LOS. In total, 72 staff submitted 138 ideas, addressing a range of issues including patient experience, cost of care, workflow, utilization, and access. Figuring out the cost of procedures in the catheterization laboratory and creating a smartphone application that aids patients to navigate through appointments and connect with providers were two of the ideas that won the most number of votes and funding to be implemented in the following year. Participation in ideation was positively associated with staff perception of supportive learning environment. For example, one standard deviation increase in perceived welcome for differences in opinions was associated with a 43% increase in the odds of participating in ideation (OR=1.43, p=0.04) and 55% increase in the odds of suggesting more than one idea (OR=1.55, p=0.09). Experimentation, a practice that supports learning, was negatively associated with ideation (OR=0.36, p=0.02), and leadership that reinforces learning was not associated with ideation. The perception that new ideas are not sufficiently considered or experimented could have motivated staff to participate, as the ideation contest enables experimentation and learning. Interviews with ideation participants revealed that the contest enabled systematic bottom-up contribution to quality improvement, promoted a sense of community, facilitated organizational exchange of ideas, and spread a problem-solving oriented mindset. Enabling frontline staff to feel that their ideas are welcome and that making mistakes is permissible may increase their likelihood to engage in problem solving and speaking up, contributing to organizational improvement.

This paper discusses several challenges in designing field experiments to better understand how organizational and institutional design shapes innovation outcomes and the production of knowledge. We proceed to describe the field experimental research program carried out by our Crowd Innovation Laboratory at Harvard University to clarify how we have attempted to address these research design challenges. This program has simultaneously solved important practical innovation problems for partner organizations, like NASA and Harvard Medical School (HMS), while contributing research advances, particularly in relation to innovation contests and tournaments. We conclude by proceeding to highlight the opportunity for the scholarly community to develop a “science of innovation” that utilized field experiments as means to generate knowledge.

Selecting among alternative projects is a core management task in all innovating organizations. In this paper, we focus on the evaluation of frontier scientific research projects. We argue that the “intellectual distance” between the knowledge embodied in research proposals and an evaluator’s own expertise systematically relates to the evaluations given. To estimate relationships, we designed and executed a grant proposal process at a leading research university in which we randomized the assignment of evaluators and proposals to generate 2,130 evaluator–proposal pairs. We find that evaluators systematically give lower scores to research proposals that are closer to their own areas of expertise and to those that are highly novel. The patterns are consistent with biases associated with boundedly rational evaluation of new ideas. The patterns are inconsistent with intellectual distance simply contributing “noise” or being associated with private interests of evaluators. We discuss implications for policy, managerial intervention, and allocation of resources in the ongoing accumulation of scientific knowledge.