Measuring Exaptation and Its Impact on Innovation, Search, and Problem Solving
测量了制药行业中功能转换的发生频率，发现约42%的现有药物新功能具有功能转换性质，且大多数激进创新属于功能转换，通常发生在远离原市场的领域，提出功能转换是一种不同于刻意创新的搜索和问题解决机制。
Exaptation, the emergence of latent functionality in existing artifacts, is an underexplored mechanism of novelty generation in innovation. In this paper, we measure the frequency of exaptation in the pharmaceutical industry. We find that about 42% of new functions derived from existing drugs have an exaptive nature. We think that this constitutes the first measure of exaptation in any industry. We also link exaptation with radical innovation and find that most radical innovations in our sample are exaptive. Also, nearly all radical innovations occur in market areas very distant from the drug’s original market. We propose that exaptive innovation constitutes a different search mechanism and problem-solving approach from deliberate innovation and discuss the role of context and serendipity in innovation.