Benjamin Franklin's Junto and American Philosophical Society (see yesterday's post), reminded me of some fascinating research undertaken by Dartmouth’s Kevin Dunbar (whose work has been cited in not just one, but two of my favorite books). To understand how scientific breakthroughs are achieved in real life, Dunbar and a team at McGill University conducted a longitudinal study of several research laboratories.

As Steven Johnson describes in "Where Good Ideas Come From," "With a science like molecular biology, we inevitable have an image in our heads of the scientist alone in the lab, hunched over a microscope, and stumbling across a major new finding But Dunbar's study showed that those isolated eureka moments were rarities. Instead, most important ideas emerged during regular lab meetings, where a dozen or so researchers would gather and informally present and discuss their latest work. If you looked at the map of idea formation that Dunbar created, the ground zero of innovation was not the microscope. It was the conference table." (There are 3-4 more fascinating paragraphs I won't bother transcribing - buy the book if you're curious to get more of Johnson's take)

As Dave Epstein describes in "Range," "Dunbar witnessed important breakthroughs live, and saw that the labs most likely to turn unexpected findings into new knowledge for humanity made a lot of analogies, and made them from a variety of base domains. The labs in which scientists had more diverse professional backgrounds were the ones where more and more varied analogies were offered, and where breakthroughs were more reliably produced when the unexpected arose... In the face of the unexpected, the range of available analogies helped determine who learned something new. In the lone lab that did not make any new findings during Dunbar's project, everyone ha similar and highly specialized backgrounds, and analogies were almost never used. 'When all the members of the laboratory have the same knowledge at their disposal, then when a problem arises, a group of similar minded individuals will not provide more information to make analogies than a single individual,' Dunbar concluded." (also omitted some juicy bits so you can read the book for yourself)

I was reminded of these references because of their relevance to the question, “Why do scientific breakthroughs occur?” This study indicates that one reason they occur is because researchers gather to talk about what they’re learning, and to share perspectives with others who are working on different problems. This gets to the very heart of a Junto gathering. So if you're going to form a Junto, 1) bring your work problems, and 2) gather with a group of dissimilar others who can bring radically different perspectives to bear on the problem at hand.

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