Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 11



The first dimension suggests that innovators would spend a greater portion of their early
life-cycle in education - as opposed to actively innovating - so that innovation becomes less
likely at young ages. The second dimension, the narrowing of expertise, is essentially a ‘death of
the Renaissance man’ effect. It will tend to reduce the technology-wide capacities of individual
innovators, who become less able to draw on knowledge in other fields in their creative process
and less capable of implementing ideas by themselves. The narrowing of expertise thus suggests
fundamental changes in the organization of innovative activity, with innovators increasingly
working in teams. This reasoning suggests potentially powerful shifts in the process of science.
In fact, scientists themselves, as will be detailed extensively below, have rapidly and generally
evolved in how they produce new ideas, with the probability of signature contributions declining
at younger ages and increasing among teams.

Now consider science policy. Science policy bears on scientific progress and the effects
of such progress, including advances in economic prosperity, health and longevity. Moreover, as
further discussed below, central features of ideas themselves suggest substantial market failures
in idea production, so that government policy has explicit roles to play in fostering idea
production.

The objective of this paper is to examine how science policy itself might evolve. Given
that science is changing, the institutions that are efficient in supporting science at one point in
time may be less appropriate at a later point of time. On precise dimensions, a failure to
continually re-tune science policy may therefore impede scientific progress.

First, science policy critically influences entry into scientific careers. Research agencies
like the NIH actively wrestle with why young scientists have become increasingly unlikely to
win research grants, which are critical to career progress and success. In fact, former NIH
director Elias Zerhouni identified this age trend as the most important challenge for American
science and funding agencies (Kaiser 2008). From the burden of knowledge perspective, this age
trend follows in part because younger scholars have ever-extending training phases, so that
substantial innovative contributions become increasingly unlikely at younger ages. The resulting
bias toward older scholars may thus have a strong foundation. On the other hand, lengthening
training phases reduce incentives to enter scientific careers. If talented individuals increasingly



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