Publications
Publications
- November–December 2018
- Organization Science
Slack Time and Innovation
By: Ajay Agrawal, Christian Catalini, Avi Goldfarb and Hong Luo
Abstract
Traditional innovation models assume that new ideas are developed up to the point where the benefit of the marginal project is just equal to the cost. Because labor is a key input to innovation when the opportunity cost of time is lower, such as during school breaks or time off from work, we find that such models predict the number of ideas developed will be greater, but the average quality will be lower due to the lower expected value of marginal ideas. However, we posit that slack time such as school breaks may be qualitatively different than work time because contiguous blocks may be particularly beneficial for working on complex projects. We present a model incorporating this idea that predicts that although more ideas will be produced during slack time, they will have higher average complexity and perhaps even higher average value. Using data on 165,410 projects posted on Kickstarter (2009–2015), we report findings consistent with the model's predictions.
Keywords
Citation
Agrawal, Ajay, Christian Catalini, Avi Goldfarb, and Hong Luo. "Slack Time and Innovation." Organization Science 29, no. 6 (November–December 2018): 1056–1073.
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