Research: Remote work could hamper scientific innovation

Remote working could limit our opportunities to think differently and imagine solutions that challenge pre-established models. — AFP Relaxnews

Working from home is a subject of debate in many companies. Employees are keen to work remotely, while managers are concerned about the repercussions this way of working can have on business and company culture. A study published in the journal Nature weighs up the pros and cons, arguing that remote working may be detrimental to innovation.

Researchers at the Universities of Pittsburgh and Oxford came to this conclusion after analysing over 20 million scientific papers and four million patents filed between 1960 and 2020. These documents, old as they are, show that collaborative remote work has become more commonplace over the years. For example, some of the papers studied were written by scientists separated by some 1,000 kilometers. For patents, these distances vary between 250 and 750 kilometers.