Examination of the process of generation of new scientific knowledge based on Structural Hall Theory

Abstract

　This study examines the process of generating new scientific knowledge based on Structural Hall Theory, one of the major theories in business administration. According to this theory, "When there is a cluster consisting of social connections between people with homogeneity of thought and a cluster with homogeneity that differs from that, when a person (a "structural hole") appears to connect the two, information from both clusters flows into the hole and novel ideas can easily be generated. On the other hand, the co-occurrence relationship of new concepts (author's keywords in scientific papers) in a specific natural science field has not been observed chronologically to support this theory, and the process of generating novel knowledge has not been discussed. This study observed the co-occurrence of author keywords in the research on GaN crystal development for blue LED development, and found that the keywords used in the groundbreaking research (which won the Nobel Prize in Physics) appeared in the structural holes between the two clusters.