Global Commons for Science and Technology

When political scientist Elinor Ostrom accepted the Nobel Prize in 2009, she explained that a lifetime of research had led her to conclude that “a core goal of public policy should be to facilitate the development of institutions that bring out the best in humans.” She spent her career studying how communities can share common resources sustainably?and developed?design principles for institutions to protect and allocate important resources.

One of those resources, argue Leonard Lynn ?and Hal Salzman , should be the scientific and technical knowledge that can help address global problems. Building on Ostrom’s research, they argue that challenges such as pandemics and climate change “require resources, scientific understanding, and know-how that can best be developed through common resource pools to enable both global scale and rapid dissemination.”?

Citing the example of the international research center CERN, Lynn and Salzman make the case that sharing vital science and technology through global innovation commons—and abandoning the competitive, winner-take-all approach that’s common in policymaking—would bring substantial benefits to the United States and the world.?

Read more about building global commons for science and innovation.