I recently got a paper accepted in Management Science about how making learning from others more challenging can increase the amount of knowledge available.
Abstract: Knowledge sharing is central to strategy and organizational learning, yet its effect on knowledge production remains underexplored. When knowledge diffuses too easily, individuals may free-ride on the knowledge produced by others’ costly individual learning, creating a suboptimal equilibrium in which social learning persists but the average payoff is no greater than if everyone learned independently---a paradox first identified by Rogers (1988). We develop a game-theoretic model to reexamine this puzzle. In our baseline model, we reproduce Rogers’ paradox: frictionless sharing does not increase performance beyond individual learning alone. We then extend the model to incorporate absorptive capacity---the need for prior investment in one’s own knowledge before learning from others. Absorptive capacity discourages pure free-riding. Counterintuitively, although it introduces frictions in social learning, absorptive capacity increases collective knowledge production beyond the level attainable through individual learning alone. This explains why extensive knowledge sharing in domains such as academia does not erode incentives for knowledge creation and contributes to knowledge-based theories of the firm by showing that while hierarchical control may be crucial in contexts in which knowledge is simple and codifiable, but less necessary where knowledge is complex and tacit. More broadly, our analysis illustrates how formal modeling can uncover overlooked mechanisms and integrate insights across cultural evolution, organizational learning, and strategy.