Culture
Why Big Cities Promote Less Innovation Than They Once Did
When it comes to new ideas, city size may not matter as much today as it did in the past.
Big cities are considered great engines of new ideas for good reason. Lots of smart people in a single place means many minds converging on the same problem. That leads some people to create fresh solutions—and it leads others to hear about these solutions early, steal them, and try to improve them even more.
But when it comes to innovation, city size may not matter as much today as it did in the past. That's the argument made in a new working paper by researchers Mikko Packalen of the University of Waterloo in Canada and Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University. The duo writes that the "considerable advantage" once held by big cities on great new ideas "has eroded" in recent decades: