Why do some scientific breakthroughs take off while others languish in the shadows? In their paper, “Breakthrough Recognition: Competing for Attention,” Wharton management professor Anoop Menon and Sen Chai, a management professor at ESSEC Business School in France, analyzed more than 5.3 million research papers published in the life sciences between 1970-1999 to see what might be hindering some ideas from gaining wider recognition. Menon recently sat down with Knowledge at Wharton to discuss their findings. (Listen to the podcast using the player above.) An edited transcript of the conversation follows. Knowledge at Wharton: You have some previous research that looks at the nature of breakthroughs in the space industry. This latest paper looks more at research in the life sciences. What was the inspiration for this paper? Anoop Menon: The inspiration comes from the observation that time and time again, we see great, really novel ideas come out in terms of just the raw quality of the idea.…