Teams have become the primary producers of scientific discoveries, surpassing individual contributions. Despite this rise and the exponential growth in scientific and technological knowledge, recent studies have found a slowdown in progress across various fields. What fosters disruptive innovation in scientific teams? This research makes use of a plausible external variation involving the entry of Southwest Airlines as a low-cost carrier, and finds that reduced travel costs enhance the disruptiveness of innovation in scientific teams. This research also explores variations in team sizes and composition and disentangles the effects of travel costs and time. Similar patterns are observed in patent data, indicating consistent findings across different forms of innovation.