Potts, Jason (2019). Innovation Commons -
The Origin of Economic Growth. Oxford University Press.
“The hard part of the innovation problem is the beginning.
And the very hard part is the very beginning.”
This book stands for innovation theory, just as the prequel ("The Phantom Menace", "Attack of the Clones" and "Revenge of the Sith") stands for the original "Star Wars" trilogy.
Potts focuses not on the typical insightful genius and Schumpeterian lone hero of innovation (as the likes of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg) but rather on the humus where this caste flourishes: the innovation commons.
According to the author, entrepreneurship is not the origin of innovation, but rather the market expression of ideas about what generates value.
The real source of innovation is the creation of those ideas that make logical sense and are verifiable. The number of entrepreneurs in an economy, public support for entrepreneurs, public spending on innovation, number of patents, or ranking at the top of the most qualified universities are all measures of the public policy effort, but not necessarily measures of what really matters which is innovative ideas.
The innovation commons are embodied in an efficient system of cooperation rules to temporarily facilitate aggregation of information from diverse sources (far more complex than could be handled by an individual entrepreneur) to maximize, in an environment of uncertainty, the probability of reaching a scientific discovery, also presupposing a qualitative appreciation of this information as a key input for innovation.
These rules, often tacit, can be considered a technology. Indeed, some technologies are physical, while others - related to the organization and coordination of people, cooperatively or collectively solving the problems of innovation - are social. Both compete for innovation to change the knowledge base of the entire economy.
In the “innovation commons”, the accumulated information serves to: (a) tackle regulatory and legislative barriers; (b) identify sources of competing or complementary investments; (c) discover new markets; (d) enforce property rights on new technologies; (e) analyze ways of discriminating in the market; (f) appreciate important price points; (g) evaluate how consumers will use the technology and (e) analyze business models.
Thus, the problem of innovation should deserve consideration as an evolving social process involving intergroup knowledge distribution, investment coordination in a scenario of uncertainty and knowledge aggregation in a context of institutional evolution.
Considering, in particular, that “The core of the innovation-sharing economy does not reside in the kindness of people, but in the effectiveness of rules. It exists not in the behaviors of people, but in the institutions that govern them”, some ideas on how to promote innovation would be to:
- Support the creation of innovation commons;
- Seek to engage the "enemies of innovation" in the innovation process, if necessary by compensating for their losses;
- Facilitate collective learning;
- Minimize rent-seeking behavior in the innovation process.
A number of these ideas are close to Mariana Mazzucato’s thinking as becomes quite clear in the interesting article published by Jo?o Medeiros in 08.10.2019 in the Wired (https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mariana-mazzucato), namely regarding the lobbying of big corporations for relaxed regulation and low taxes, while cutting public investment in scientific research, higher education and workers training.
Great reading to understand thoroughly the role of the State, collective learning and cooperation with regard to the making of innovation in ICT and technological industries.
