Out of the box ideas need a familiar framework for acceptance

If you want to get people to accept and spread new ideas, you need to embed them in a framework that they already understand and accept. That’s the conclusion of research done by Uzzi, Mukherjee, Springer, and Jones. The study also supports the benefits of working in teams rather than solo, since teams are nearly 40% more likely to reference novel concepts in their work. The authors found that:

… novelty and conventionality are not opposing factors in the production of science; rather, papers with an injection of novelty into an otherwise exceptionally familiar mass of prior work are unusually likely to have high impact.

While the research uses the data found in references to support their findings, there is strong support for the idea that this may apply to any kind of knowledge development and transfer process. Indeed, the study authors conclude that “extending technology with atypical combinations of prior ideas while embedding them in conventional knowledge frames may be critical to human progress”.

Source: Science