# Proximity matters for knowledge spillovers

By [Brandon Donnelly](https://paragraph.com/@brandondonnelly), 2022-08-22

business, co-working-spaces, creativity, knowledge-spillovers, knowledge-transfers, proximity, research-study, urbanism

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I am at my most creative when I'm in the same room with other people and we are bouncing ideas around. There's a compounding effect that takes place. One person says something and that then triggers a new idea. I find the whole experience very rewarding and, for me, it's a reminder that creativity can be a process. It is also a reminder that proximity is important for those of us who have jobs that deal in creativity.

We have spoken a lot about this on the blog, but [here is an interesting and recent study](https://www.nber.org/papers/w30120) that looked at knowledge transfers across different tech startups within one of the largest co-working spaces in the US. For context, the co-working space itself consisted of five floors, about 100,000 square feet, and housed 251 different startups. To measure knowledge transfer, the researchers looked at instances of a startup adopting a component of a peer's technology stack.

What they found was the following:

*   Knowledge exchange is greater amongst startups that are dissimilar
    
*   Close physical proximity greatly influences the chance of knowledge spillovers; however, this effect quickly falls off
    
*   After 20 meters or so, there's almost no difference between being down the hall or being on a separate floor within the building
    
*   One of the ways you can counteract this last finding is to create shared spaces; startups with overlapping common areas, such as a kitchen, saw greater distances of influence
    

In short: proximity matters.

If you'd like to download a full copy of the study, [click here](https://www.nber.org/papers/w30120).

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*Originally published on [Brandon Donnelly](https://paragraph.com/@brandondonnelly/proximity-matters-for-knowledge-spillovers)*