Idea twins: Simultaneous discoveries as a research tool
研究了科学中同时发现现象的理论潜力，提出系统识别近期同时发现的新方法，并公开数据集，对创新和战略研究者有用。
Abstract Research Summary Over half a century after Merton's (1963) description of simultaneous discoveries “as a strategic research site” for social science, they are hardly ever studied. This paper illustrates the potential of this phenomenon as a research tool. First, I describe their vast theoretical potential for strategy and innovation research and review prior works on the topic. Second, I describe a new method that generates lists of recent simultaneous discoveries in science systematically and automatically using openly available sources. Third, I make the resulting dataset available for anyone to use. Managerial Summary Despite much anecdotal evidence that different people can simultaneously come up with essentially the same creative idea, little attention has been given to this phenomenon. Yet, “idea twins” have a deep impact on creative workers, and can teach us a lot about strategy and innovation. In this paper, I describe their potential as a research tool and the types of questions they can help to answer. I also propose a method to “harvest” simultaneous discoveries in science and provide a dataset that includes thousands of examples.