• DOI:10.1007/s11002-019-09506-7
• Corpus ID: 204879502

How do successful scholars get their best research ideas? An exploration

@article{Cao2019HowDS,
  title={How do successful scholars get their best research ideas? An exploration},
  author={Cathy Y Cao and Xinyu Cao and Matthew Cashman and M. Kumar and Artem Timoshenko and Jeremy Yang and Shuyi Yu and Jerry Zhang and Yuting Zhu and Birger Wernerfelt},
  journal={Marketing Letters},
  year={2019},
  volume={30},
  pages={221 - 232}
}

• Cathy Y Cao, Xinyu Cao, +7 authors B. Wernerfelt
• Published 20 November 2019
• Business
• Marketing Letters

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.