Small research teams are more likely to achieve results

They found that in paper writing, patent invention and software product development, topics grew more monotonous as the number of team members increased. A simple overview of existing knowledge can be more innovative if written by fewer people.

“The nature of small teams and large teams is different,” says co-author Lingfei Wu. “Small teams can always remember forgotten ideas, ask questions and create new areas for research, while large teams chase the hot spots, discard less popular ideas, answer questions and integrate existing knowledge frameworks.”

The analysis shows that both small and large teams play an important role in the research ecosystem, with the former generating novel and promising insights that are rapidly developed and refined by large teams. Some experiments cost is so high (the Large Hadron Collider) that they can only be achieved on a large scale by a single team. But the authors argue that for efficiency reasons, other complex scientific problems might be left to a small, independent, and adventurous team.

“There are a lot of grants going on around the world for larger and larger research teams,” Evans says. “We're suggesting that there should be more diverse science budgets. If you really want to push forward science and technology, you need to act like a venture capitalist rather than a big bank -- you should fund a series of smaller, basically unrelated research projects to increase the likelihood of significant, ground-breaking results.”

He added: “Yes, most of these investments will fail. But the strategy itself is optimal control of the risk of failure, and if you want to discover something, you have to take a bet.”