Four out of five innovations originate in user suggestions
Paul D. Fernhout
http://books.google.com/books?id=YIoGFZz4yQMC&pg=PA207&lpg=PA207
"""
[I]n 1969, a widely cited National Science Foundation study of five hundred
innovations found that four out of five of them originated in user
suggestions or were actually invented by the users. In 1981, another study
by Eric von Hippel, an MIT professor of management, found similar
percentages across industries: Users came up with 81 percent of the
innovations in scientific instruments, 60 percent in process machinery.
Between 10 and 40 percent of all users modify the products they buy. These
are the so-called "lead users," and their ideas often filter throughout the
collaborative web.
"""
Given that, will someone explain to me again any justification for patents
(or any sort of proprietary products) these days? :-)
If it is true that 80% or so of innovation is coming from the users, how
much more innovation would happen if *all* product designs were open and
freely licensed? And remember, it might not just be 20% more innovations to
be the same amount, the total might be some multiple of the current amount
of innovation, like two times or ten times or even one hundred times. Just
think, even with patents, almost all innovation is user-suggested.
Given that, consider again:
"Economists say copyright and patent laws are killing innovation; hurting
economy "
http://www.physorg.com/news155495067.html
"""
Abolishing patent and copyright laws sounds radical, but two economists at
Washington University in St. Louis say it's an idea whose time has come.
Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine see innovation as a key to reviving the
economy. They believe the current patent/copyright system discourages and
prevents inventions from entering the marketplace. The two professors have
published their views in a new book, Against Intellectual Monopoly, from
Cambridge University Press. "From a public policy view, we'd ideally like to
eliminate patent and copyright laws altogether," says Levine, John H. Biggs
Distinguished Professor of Economics. "There's plenty of protection for
inventors and plenty of protection and opportunities to make money for
creators. It's not that we see this as some sort of charitable act that
people are going to invent and create things without earning money. Evidence
shows very strongly there are lots of ways to make money without patents and
copyright."
"""
Or:
"The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind"
http://yupnet.org/boyle/archives/69
"Here we come to another big difference between the commons of the mind and
the earthy commons. As has frequently been pointed out, information products
are often made up of fragments of other information products; your
information output is someone else’s information input. These inputs may be
snippets of code, discoveries, prior research, images, genres of work,
cultural references, or databases of single nucleotide polymorphisms—each is
raw material for future innovation. Every increase in protection raises the
cost of, or reduces access to, the raw material from which you might have
built those future products. The balance is a delicate one; one Nobel
Prize–winning economist has claimed that it is actually impossible to strike
that balance so as to produce an informationally efficient market. Whether
or not it is impossible in theory, it is surely a difficult problem in
practice. In other words, even if enclosure of the arable commons always
produced gains (itself a subject of debate), enclosure of the information
commons clearly has the potential to harm innovation as well as to support
it. More property rights, even though they supposedly offer greater
incentives, do not necessarily make for more and better production and
innovation—sometimes just the opposite is true. It may be that intellectual
property rights slow down innovation, by putting multiple roadblocks in the
way of subsequent innovation. Using a nice inversion of the idea of the
tragedy of the commons, Heller and Eisenberg referred to these effects—the
transaction costs caused by myriad property rights over the necessary
components of some subsequent innovation—as “the tragedy of the
anticommons.”"
Anyway, just linking together a few key economic arguments for open
manufacturing.
--Paul Fernhout
Erik
seminal work on user innovation. Personally I must say that I love his
work. It is well motivated but moreover, he has striking examples to
highlight what is happening. The book "Democratizing innovation" is
also an interesting read.
He gives very inspiring lectures, one of which is embedded on my blog
here:
http://blog.erikdebruijn.nl/archives/71-von-Hippel-and-user-centered-innovation.html
I also relate it to personal fabrication and thingiverse and the
RepRap project.
Von Hippel wrote a paper on "Impact of “Sticky” Local Information". I
see this in my own experience too. I'm empowered by having automated
tools of production. It is hard to tell someone exactly what I need to
fix a certain problem (some device that broke) and to find someone to
come up with a solution, develop it and then distribute it to me. Even
if a specialist might be better at solving the problem, I have the
broken device here. Without looking for a specialist I can design a
spare part and print it on my RepRap 3D printer or cut it on a laser
cutter in a FabLab. If it's not suitable, I go through another design
iteration hours later, instead of weeks later. In the former
situation, the iteration cycle would simply be too long for many
solutions. Apart from that, agency related costs are very high.
But open source has another advantage for more complex projects, such
as creating a device. It often needs several distinct but related
competencies (mechanical, electrical, etc.). Because open
communication is the default way of working, anyone with complementary
skills can jump in an help. Even if it is only a suggestion, it could
push the project forward. You still have 'coordination costs' of doing
the project with multiple people (just like in software), but with
personal fabricators in the homes of project members, each would be
able to have the 'trunk' version of the device that they're making.
Also, an open source project would easily get a lot of feedback
because everything can happen in the open. There's no reason to hide
development as in the case of proprietary development.
On the subject of open source, IP and technological revolution (and
how to ruin it):
http://blog.erikdebruijn.nl/archives/83-Views-on-open-source,-technological-revolution-and-innovation.html
Hopefully you'll find interesting resources on my blog. It is always
concentrated around open source, IT, personal fabrication and personal
empowerment (DIY), so I hope you guys don't mind me promoting it
because of its relevance.
Erik de Bruijn
On Mar 22, 10:44 pm, "Paul D. Fernhout" <pdfernh...@kurtz-