Unexpected intellectual friendships, like Plato and Aristotle, are the secret of long-term innovation, finds prize-winning US academic

(Press-News.org) The winner of one of the UK’s biggest academic prizes has discovered what he believes is the key to long-term innovation and economic growth: unplanned intellectual friendships – like Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, or DNA pioneers James Watson and Francis Crick.

Professor Kirk Doran, an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana in the United States, has been researching what drives innovation for 14 years – and has made his discovery by forensically analysing data including published research and census, tax, migration and historical data.

Professor Doran has been announced today as the winner of the $75,000 Panmure House Prize, which seeks out ‘radical innovation’ and celebrates Adam Smith, the 18th century Scots economist and philosopher who is known as the father of modern economics.

“Unexpected intellectual collaborations and friendships that you didn't plan in advance lead to the greatest explosions of new knowledge generation and innovation,” Professor Doran explains. “It’s when innovative people bump into each other randomly and then start hanging out with each other all the time – and talking about dozens of different topics – that they can stumble across something stellar.  Friendship is then the key bonding factor in deep collaborations over many years that can overcome immense challenges to produce groundbreaking new discoveries, breakthroughs and inventions.”

These explosions of new knowledge drive economic growth and often come from intellectual friendships between experts in different disciplines, Professor Doran explains. Inter-disciplinary thinking was a key hallmark of the work of Adam Smith, who was a central figure of the Scottish Enlightenment in the second half of the 18th century. Coffee house gatherings and debates played a central role in the era’s outpouring of intellectual and scientific accomplishments.

“The Scottish Enlightenment shows brilliantly how a melting pot of minds can lead to huge innovations in science, culture and society,” Professor Doran says.

“Unexpected friendships during this time that led to breakthroughs include Adam Smith and Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume. They both used experience and observation rather than reason to understand causes and effects in the world – an approach known as empiricism. And this laid the foundation of modern economic thinking – particularly that free trade and markets can benefit all of society, not just a privileged few.”

Other historic friendships that have led to innovative breakthroughs include ancient Greek philosophers Plato and his student Aristotle, whose ideas and teachings in philosophy still shape our understanding of the world today. English 16th century lawyer and scholar Thomas More and his friend Desiderius Erasmus, a Dutch priest, together progressed humanism, which uses science and evidence to understand the world rather than religion.

German mathematicians and friends David Hilbert and Hermann Minkowski were pioneers in applying mathematics to physics and influenced German physicist Albert Einstein. Other pioneering friendships include American biologist James Watson and Francis Crick, an English physicist, who together discovered the structure of DNA in 1953.

Professor Doran’s research includes analysing which pioneers knew each other, worked together, lived near each other or shared similar ideas. He has analysed data stretching as far back as the 1300s to the present day. To unlock the economic potential of these unplanned intellectual friendships, Professor Doran is calling on countries to encourage more collaboration between innovators in different disciplines.

“Policy makers must increase incentives for collaboration across disciplines,” he says. “If institutions can better promote these collaborations, I believe the long-run impact can be enormous.”

Professor Doran will use the Panmure House Prize money to further his research, including better understanding which social structures and incentives create the type of teams where collaboration can lead to long-term innovation and economic growth.

He will also visit Edinburgh to collect his prize and take part in three days of activities at Panmure House. This will include recording a podcast, hosting a student workshop and presenting a public lecture.

Named after Panmure House, Adam Smith’s former Edinburgh home, the Panmure House Prize rewards groundbreaking research that contributes to advancing long-term thinking and innovation.

Professor Doran was one of four academics from the United States, Spain and Israel who were shortlisted for the prize, which attracted a record number of entries in 2024, its fourth year.

The Panmure House Prize is administered in partnership with FCLTGlobal, a non-profit organisation that promotes long-term investing, and supported by investment manager Baillie Gifford.

James Anderson, Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer at investment management company Lingotto Innovation and Chair of the Panmure House Prize judging panel, said: “Pioneers who drive progress and new thinking are the engines behind economic growth – as Professor Doran’s research shows us. It’s critical to support these pioneers and we’re excited to be awarding our fourth Panmure House Prize to research that we really feel is groundbreaking.  Adam Smith was himself a pioneer whose hallmark was collaboration across different disciplines – and Professor Doran’s work embodies this approach.”

John T. McGreevy, the Charles and Jill Fischer Provost of the University of Notre Dame, said: "We are delighted to see Kirk Doran's research receive this international recognition. The Panmure House Prize’s emphasis on long-term, interdisciplinary thinking mirrors the University of Notre Dame's commitment to scholarly innovation and excellence across the disciplines."

Entrants to the Panmure House Prize undergo a rigorous selection process, overseen by a distinguished panel of judges comprising leading scholars and practitioners in the field of economics, business and policy.

Each is evaluated based on their originality, scholarly rigour, potential impact, and relevance to contemporary economic and societal discourse.

The other shortlisted candidates for the 2024 Panmure House Prize were:

Michela Giorcelli, Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Dr Moran Lazar, Senior Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at the Coller School of Management in Tel Aviv University in Israel. Dr Ivanka Visnjic, Professor of Innovation at Esade Business School in Barcelona, Spain, where she leads the Operations, Innovation, and Data Sciences Department. For more information about the Panmure House Prize, including submission guidelines and key dates, please visit the website.

About Panmure House

Panmure House was originally built in 1691 and was the home of Scottish Enlightenment economist Adam Smith from 1778 to his death in 1790. It is now part of Edinburgh Business School, the business school of Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.

Edinburgh Business School and Heriot-Watt University rescued Panmure House from dereliction in 2008 and invested £5.6 million over 10 years restoring it. Panmure House now hosts a year-round programme of events, debates, research projects and education focused on urgent economic, political and philosophical questions in the 21st century.

About Adam Smith

Born in Kirkcaldy, in Fife, Adam Smith was a Scottish economist and philosopher best known today as the father of modern economics. His most famous work, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, continues to be regarded as the foundation text for the study of the relationship between society, politics, commerce and prosperity. Smith was a central figure of the Scottish Enlightenment – the extraordinary flowering of intellectual and cultural achievement that contributed so much to the shaping of the modern world.  He was also a teacher with a profound interest in education for all.

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