Essays on cross-field differences in knowledge novelty, temporality and impact

Guide(s)

Kaushik, Nilam

Department

Strategy

Area

Strategy

University

Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

Place

Bangalore

Publication Date

3-31-2026

Year Awarded

March 2026

Year Completed

March 2026

Year Registered

June 2020

Abstract

Knowledge creation is a central driver of economic growth and innovation, yet it varies systematically across scientific fields and technologies. Existing research has largely examined knowledge creation at either the micro level, focusing on individuals, firms, and teams, or the macro level, using broad industry or technology aggregates. In doing so, it often overlooks the meso-level contexts in which knowledge is produced: knowledge fields understood as structured communities organized around shared epistemic foundations, evaluative criteria, and search heuristics. As a result, systematic differences in the nature, dynamics, and impact of knowledge across fields remain underexplored. I adopt a meso-level perspective to examine how differences across knowledge fields, specifically across scientific fields1 and technologies2 , give rise to persistent heterogeneity in knowledge creation. Across three essays, I analyze how key dimensions of knowledge—novelty, temporality, and technological impact—vary systematically across knowledge fields. Drawing on insights from Strategy, Science of Science, and Innovation studies, and leveraging largescale bibliometric and patent data, this dissertation combines established empirical approaches with novel methodologies. The first essay focuses on scientific publications and examines how industry participation in scientific publishing shapes field-level knowledge novelty across 1,644 STEM fields. Using 11.9 million publications, I show that greater industry publishing contribution is associated with higher novelty occurrence and breadth, but lower novelty distance, highlighting how field contexts condition the nature of scientific novelty. The second essay shifts attention to technological innovation and challenges the conventional S-curve view of technological evolution by documenting heterogeneous temporal patterns across 574 technologies. I identify three distinct evolutionary archetypes, classic S-curves, sustained exponential growth, and hybrid trajectories, and show how early technological generality and coupling predict long-run technology evolution patterns. The third essay incorporates an individual-level perspective alongside knowledge fields, examining heterogeneity among star inventors, distinguishing between Pasteur and Edison stars, and demonstrates that their inventive performance and relative importance vary systematically across technologies and scientific fields. Together, these essays advance a field-centered perspective on knowledge creation and innovation. By highlighting the role of meso-level contexts, this dissertation clarifies the boundary conditions of widely used theories and offers more precise insights into how innovation processes differ across fields, with implications for researchers, firms, and policymakers.

Pagination

iv, 188p.

Copyright

Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

Document Type

Dissertation

DAC Chairperson

Kaushik, Nilam

DAC Members

Jha, Srivardhini K; Krishnan, Rishikesha T

Type of Degree

Ph.D.

Relation

DIS-IIMB-FPM-P26-14

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