Can recombination growth lead to scientific breakthroughs?

Since the 1990s, recombinant growth theory has fascinated academic circles by proposing that new ideas flourish through reconfiguring existing ones, leading to accelerated innovation in science and technology. However, after three decades, a marked decline in scientific breakthroughs challenges this theory. We explore its potential limitations, suggesting that while it emphasizes complementarity among ideas, it overlooks the competitive dynamics between them and how this rivalry fosters major breakthroughs. Examining 20 scientific breakthroughs nominated by surveyed scientists, we reveal a recurring pattern where new ideas are intentionally crafted to challenge and replace established ones. Analyzing 19 million papers spanning a century, we consistently observe a negative correlation between reference atypicality, which reflects the effort to recombine more ideas, and paper disruption, indicating the extent to which this work represents major breakthroughs, across all fields, periods, and team sizes. Moreover, our analysis of a novel dataset, comparing early and subsequent versions of 2,461 papers, offers quasi-experimental evidence suggesting that additional efforts to increase reference atypicality indeed result in a reduction of disruption for the same paper. In summary, our analyses challenge recombinant growth theory, suggesting that scientific breakthroughs originate from a clear purpose to replace established, impactful ideas.