As science progresses through time, the complexity of research continues to increase. The days of one expert scientist leading in notable discoveries are of the past. As both academia and industry have discovered, teams are required in science to make the successful discoveries of today and tomorrow. One can visually see this transition through time by reviewing the list of Nobel Prize Laureates in three categories, Physics, Chemistry, and Physiology or Medicine. It was common for one scientist to be recognized as a Nobel Laureat in 1901, whereas after 1960, it became more common for two or three scientists to be recognized together as a team. While many point to the necessity of successful teams having diversity of expertise (e.g. neurochemistry and psychology), other aspects of cognitive diversity are often overlooked.

Edmans (2025) recognizes six contributors to cognitive diversity, which include, educational background, professional background, cognitive style, values, demographics, and life background. While each of these contributors are significant in providing diversity of thought to the team, this presentation examines the cognitive styles of three science teams who had won the Nobel prize in the category of Physiology or Medicine. Specifically, Kirton’s (2011) Adaption-Innovation theory (A-I) will be used to examine patterns of behavior associated with each team member’s preferred problem-solving style.

A-I theory purports that each person has an innate, stable, and measurable preferred problem-solving style, that being more adaptive or more innovative, along a continuum. More adaptive individuals prefer to be more thorough and precise with detail, in effort to make improvements and increase efficiency. More adaptive individuals prefer evolutionary change, with more regard for structure and building group consensus. The more innovative individuals, on the other hand, prefer to think more broadly, with ranging views to alter the current system differently. More innovative individuals have less regard for group consensus and favor revolutionary change. One’s preferred problem-solving style is unrelated to one’s intelligence, motivations, experiences, culture, situation, age, and generation (Jablokow, 2005). In the context of problem solving, if a system isn't working and needing fixed, the more adaptive will change the system as an outcome of problem solving. The more innovative will change the system to facilitate problem solving. The A-I continuum ranges between 32 and 160, with a normal distribution curve centered on the mean of 95. Individuals complete the KAI to get a numbered position on the A-I continuum, with individuals between 95 and 32 being more adaptive, and individuals between 96 and 160 being more innovative. The standard deviation is 18 points.

The three case studies chosen to explore the problem-solving styles of team members include the 1945 Nobel Laureates, Alexander Fleming (adaptive), Ernst Chain (innovative), and Howard Florey (adaptive); 1962 Nobel Laureates, Francis Crick (strongly innovative), James Watson (innovative), and Maurice Wilkins (adaptive), and 2023, Katalin Karikó (innovative) and Drew Weissman (adaptive).

The insights gained from these three case studies will provide recommendations on harnessing cognitive diversity as it applies to normal science and revolutionary science (Kuhn, 1962).