How do successful scholars get their best research ideas? An exploration
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11002_2019_9506_ReferencePDF.pdf
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Author(s)
Cao, Cathy
Cao, Xinyu
Cashman, Matthew
Kumar, Madhav
Timoshenko, Artem
Yang, Jeremy(Jeremy Zhen)
Yu, Shuyi
Zhang, Jerry
Zhu, Yuting
Wernerfelt, Birger
Date Issued
November 2019
Journal
Marketing Letters
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Citation
Cao, Cathy et al. "How do successful scholars get their best research ideas? An exploration." Marketing Letters 30, 3-4 (November 2019): 221–232 © 2019 Springer Science Business Media, LLC
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
We interview 24 marketing professors to ask how they got the ideas for 64 of their papers. More than three-quarters of the papers were inspired by holes in the literature, by a “stylized fact” that the current literature cannot explain, or by an interaction with a manager. The rest fall into several smaller categories that to a large extent can be seen as special cases of the three big ones. We describe how papers from each of the three big categories help move the literature forward. We also illustrate the range of situations contained in each category by way of several examples. Among the authors we interview, most do not use a single source. As these authors become more senior, managerial contacts play an increasing role, while the balance between literature and stylized facts appears to be unchanged.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11002-019-09506-7
