The Rules of Contagion

cede the limelight. As physicist Max Planck supposedly once said,
‘science advances one funeral at a time.’ Researchers at MIT have
since tested this famous comment by analysing what happens after
the premature deaths of elite scientists.[7] They found that competing
groups would subsequently publish more papers – and pick up more
citations – while collaborators of the ‘star’ researcher tended to fade
in prominence.
Scientific papers aren’t only relevant to scientists. Ed Catmull, co-
founder of Pixar, has argued that publications are a useful way of
building links with specialists outside their company.[8] ‘Publishing
may give away ideas, but it keeps us connected with the academic
community,’ he once wrote. ‘This connection is worth far more than
any ideas we may have revealed’. Pixar is known for encouraging
‘small-world’ encounters between different parts of a network. This
has even influenced the design of their building, which has a large
central atrium containing potential hubs for random interactions, like
mailboxes and the cafeteria. ‘Most buildings are designed for some
functional purpose, but ours is structured to maximize inadvertent
encounters,’ as Catmull put it. The idea of social architecture has
caught on elsewhere too. In 2016, the Francis Crick Institute opened
in London. Europe’s largest biomedical lab, it would become home to
over 1,200 scientists in a £650 million building. According to its
director Paul Nurse, the layout was designed to get people interacting
by creating ‘a bit of gentle anarchy’.[9]
Unexpected encounters can help spark innovation, but if
companies remove too many office boundaries, it can have the
opposite effect. When researchers at Harvard University used digital
trackers to monitor employees at two major companies, they found
that the introduction of open-plan offices reduced face-to-face
interactions by around 70 per cent. People instead chose to
communicate online, with e-mail use increasing by over 50 per cent.
Increasing the openness of the offices had decreased the number of
meaningful interactions, reducing overall productivity.[10]
For something to spread, susceptible and infectious people need
to come into contact, either directly or indirectly. Whether we’re
looking at innovations or infections, the number of opportunities for