Tracing breakthrough innovation in the social and semantic space: evidence from Nobel laureate in medicine Rita Levi-Montalcini

Despite the general distinction between radical and incremental innovation is commonly used in the literature, such concepts lack an analytical and compelling definition for empirically tracing them. We take Nobel Prizes in medicine as signaling breakthrough innovations in the field, and we search for an empirically grounded definition and operationalization of the concept. We conduct an in-depth case study of one Nobel laureate in medicine, Rita Levi-Montalcini, and through the continuous confrontation between the literature and the empirical material, we identify six dimensions along which breakthrough innovation can be characterized and traced. Moreover, we explore the effect of Nobel Prize on the evolution of science and we show that it constitutes a source of aggregation of the scientific community as well as a boost for the generation of new knowledge.