Working Paper: NBER ID: w24339
Authors: Joshua S. Graff Zivin; Elizabeth Lyons
Abstract: Existing theories and empirical research on how innovation occurs largely assume that innovativeness is an inherent characteristic of the individual and that people with this innate ability select into jobs that require it. In this paper, we investigate whether people who do not self-select into being innovators can be induced to innovate, and whether they innovate differently than those who do self-select into innovating. To test these questions, we designed and implemented an innovation contest for engineering and computer science students which allowed us to differentiate between those who self-select into innovative activities and those who are willing to undertake them only after receiving an additional incentive for doing so. We also randomly offer encouragement to subsets of both the induced and self-selected contest participants in order to examine the importance of confidence-building interventions on each sample. We find that while induced participants have different observable characteristics than those that were ‘innately’ drawn to the competition, on average, the success of induced participants was statistically indistinguishable from their self-selected counterparts and encouragement does not change this result. Heterogeneity in treatment effects suggests an important role for the use of targeted interventions.
Keywords: innovation; incentives; randomized control trial; induced innovators; encouragement
JEL Codes: J24; M54; O32
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| inducement treatment (C22) | innovation outcomes (O36) |
| encouragement treatment (C92) | performance outcomes (L25) |
| inducement treatment (C22) | participation (D16) |
| innate abilities (G53) | effectiveness of encouragement (C92) |
| lower ability students (D29) | benefit from encouragement (G53) |
| higher ability students (D29) | adverse effect from encouragement (I12) |
| induced participants (C90) | performance outcomes (L25) |
| self-selected innovators (O35) | performance outcomes (L25) |