A few years ago an MIT paper suggested that physical proximity is still key when supporting collaboration among academic researchers.  This is despite the proliferation of virtual collaboration tools.

The study examined over 40,000 published papers and 2,350 patents from MIT researchers over a 10 year period, and mapped out a network of collaborators across the university, before then examining the locations of each collaboration, particularly in relation to the departmental and institutional membership of each researcher.

“Intuitively, there is a connection between space and collaboration,” the researchers say. “That is, you have better chance of meeting someone, connecting, and working together if you are close by spatially.

The Allen Curve

Central to the finding was the so-called Allen Curve that was devised by MIT professor Thomas Allen.  It suggests that collaboration diminishes as a function of distance.  Indeed, even simple conversations are significantly less likely to occur when people are over 10 meters apart.

Despite Allen’s work first appearing in 1977, and a large number of digital tools emerging since then to try and mitigate its impact, the MIT paper suggests its findings still hold true today.

MIT is a good place to conduct such research as most buildings on campus house many different academic groups.  This scattering of areas of inquiry means that the impact distance between workspaces has on collaboration can be clearly measured.

Interestingly, the results differed depending upon whether the output was papers or patents.  For papers, researchers located close to one another were three times more likely to collaborate than those located just 400 meters apart, with this becoming stronger the further researchers were apart from each other.

For patents, however, the curve was less steep, albeit still prominent as researchers in the same building were twice as likely to collaborate as those 400 meters apart.

“There is a persistent relationship between physical proximity and intensity of collaboration,” the authors note.

Distance matters

Have things changed as a result of a pandemic in which people have often been forced to separate and work from their homes?  A second study from MIT suggests not.

The focus of the work was the MIT campus during a time in which building renovation work was extensive and the work forced researchers to relocate.  The analysis found that those who were positioned close to one another were far more likely to collaborate.  This propensity to collaborate rose until about the five-year mark, at which point it plateaus.

As well as the proximity of the researchers, the study also took into account the various organizational factors that might influence collaboration, including the number of departments, the density of researchers, and even the distribution of researchers across buildings.

The researchers suggest that if organizations want to increase collaboration, then locating people in the same building could help to achieve this, especially if the people are from fields that might not ordinarily collaborate.  This is because such proximity increases the opportunity for interaction.