Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?
The article says... "that research effort is rising substantially while research productivity is declining sharply". No surprise there. Nowadays, Universities have to become paper mills in order to get funding. Also... Risky research and cross disciplinary  research is a sure fire way not to get tenure.As to the question, where new ideas come from... I teach creativity... the literature is in near agreement on this topic. New ideas come mostly from recombining old ideas. Essentially, this is an act of playful association. New Ideas also come from new technologies. For example... the neodymium  magnet is the reason we had the Sony Walkman.