The more you give, the more you get:Share,Exchange,and Grow

With the arrival of the month of October, the annual salute to human accomplishments is the announcement of winners of Nobel Prizes across six fields of research. In the field of science, the Nobel Prize is considered the best-known and the most prestigious award.

Any keen observer of the Nobel Prize awards would find that, since 1982, (particularly in the field of science), the Prize has had joint winners in which as many as three scientists have been awarded. These scientists are not from a singular laboratory, institute, or country, in fact, they hail from differing backgrounds representing multiple nations.

Deserving Credit and Distortions in Credit:

However, it is confounding that, three momentous discoveries in science have not won the Nobel Prize. They have a visible and significant bearing on the future advancements.

Thomas Alva Edison usually credited to be the man who invented the Light Bulb did not receive the Nobel Prize for this (now) humble but ubiquitous product. Was the Nobel committee confounded about whom to give the award to? Alessandro Volta and Humphrey Davy had significant contributions in developing the concept, John Swan owned the patent, and Edison put the concept of the light bulb to mass production years later.

Writing this column, I must have dived into the World Wide Web (WWW) at least a dozen times to grab nuggets of information. This demonstrates the undeniable utility of this high-impact discovery. Yet, its inventor, the brilliant computer scientist, Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee has not yet received the Nobel Prize. The “WWW,” launched in 1989 is an undeniable part of our being.

Step into any science laboratory, one cannot miss the display of the Periodic Table. The unmistakable, neat rows and columns of the Table facilitate the prediction of elements before they are found. How useful it is! Ask any budding chemistry student, it would not be surprising that her love for the subject grew through the colourful Periodic Table. Its inventor Dmitri Mendeleev (who published it in 1869) did not receive the Nobel Prize. He was nominated for the Prize in 1905 but was overlooked as it was “too common” by then.

The powerful Periodic Table must have played its part in Henri Moissan’s discovery of the element fluorine leading to the Nobel Prize (1906). What an irony! Mendeleev the undisputed founder of the original 56-element version of Periodic Table missed it!

And now, over the last 40 years, the days of the credit allocation of the “(solo) winner-takes-it-all”, appear to have been upended by the multiple winners of the Prize in Science; lest the deserving fellow candidates are missed out. Distortions in the allocation of credit had thus been addressed to a great extent!

The role of the Connected Economy

The historical distortions in assigning credit for discovery or invention (as shown in the three examples above) and the singular and insular association of scientific discoveries to a particular scientist may have been unfair.

Improved communication, timely connectedness, active cooperation, and diligent collaboration are the odds-on favourite in playing a significant role in identifying multiple deserving honourees.

The spectre of Intellectual Property Rights, Patents, and Copyrights (in recent years)?

Shifting lanes, last week I was invited by a start-up to devise its Go-To-Market Strategy. Prior to that, I went through the ritual of signing a confidentiality clause. The meeting was conducted guardedly in the secluded corner of a coffee shop. As we got down to the discussion, the founder shared his idea of selling a pre-owned category of goods on a platform. He presented this idea as distinct and unique. As discussions progressed, similar entrepreneurial efforts were shared, where such a concept had been executed and the lessons learned from them. In effect, in this case the already mature idea was simply being refreshed.

After the meeting, the minutes were not exchanged, one was expected to mind-store the information, burdened by the confidentiality clause.

We exploit the benefits ushered in by connectedness and the associated flow of information in this hyper-connected world. Yet, we are hyper-wary of outbound communication, casual cooperation, and friendly collaboration.

Why?

Is it the spectre of the iron-clad protection of intellectual property (through patents and copyrights)? Is this causing the constriction in the free flow of ideas?

The morbid fear is “someone will steal my idea and I need to protect it!” Does the God of Mammon smile only at those who have the idea? The Gospel of Mammon espouses that wealth is created due to scarcity. Ideas by themselves are abundant. Executing them to perfection is scarce. The execution of the idea is what generates wealth. (Recall Edison vs. Swan, Volta, Davy).

Yesteryears were fraught with inefficient communication and a constrained flow of information all the way to as recent as the mid-20th century. This may have contributed to glaring omissions in acknowledgement of certain significant inventions. Still, the ideas were not hoarded, they flowed. Notwithstanding the limitations.

The more you give, the more you get

If the exchange of ideas in the days when communication and the flow of information were slow and relatively poor, why can’t we capitalize on today’s torrential flow of information and keep the exchange of ideas vibrant and accelerated? Is there paranoia in sharing ideas? Some will argue that the exchange is happening…. but is this happening as well as it should be?

A good example is “open-source computing” and the tool which the current-day software developer cannot live without is GitHub. A quick investigation would show that the biggest technology companies are among its biggest contributors. The Big Three are: Microsoft, Google, and Red Hat. Incidentally, they happen to be among the most profitable companies as well. The companies do not think that someone is “stealing their candy,” but by allowing collaborative development, they have preserved, and not squandered their market leadership!

Does the quote “the more you give the more you get” ring a bell?

Execution is the key for ideas to flourish

Ideas being close-guarded or in isolation are as good as being null ideas. When ideas flow freely and are executed with diligence, they produce value. Two recent examples would reinforce this.

Q-Commerce (i.e., delivery of daily groceries in a fraction of an hour) seemed to be a “blue-ocean” idea. A dozen companies rushed in with this idea. I have used three such companies till I settled with one as the other two withered away.

The key is executing the idea after this idea itself soon becomes commonplace. Today, in India we see a handful of the initial dozen such start-ups thriving. Lessons get exchanged with intra-industry movements, and subsequently, the business models are fine-tuned and the fittest survive. The code base for the Q-Commerce application –is now being operationally executed to perfection.

The rapid discovery of the COVID vaccine is a resounding success for the history books. As many as three ideas for vaccine development were propounded: Vector vaccine, Messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine, and Protein subunit vaccine. These concepts were broadly shared and the countries (and companies) with experience in designing and producing the vaccine led the way, here again, execution of the idea was the key.

Concluding Note:

Can collaboration be fostered, shedding the paranoia of sharing? Then can the intellectual property be protected? The modern age computing and connectivity infrastructure have well-positioned the scientists to collaborate and increase the pace of discoveries and this honest intellectual collaboration is getting noticed and being encouraged.

How fortunate we are that this tenet is being exemplified by no less than the Nobel Prize committee, sedately acknowledging the merit of collaborative scientific contribution and selecting the multiple awardees of the Prize?

Somjit Amrit

Originally published in "Wordly-Wise" ,Times of India,Column owned by Somjit Amrit

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/worldly-wise/the-more-you-give-the-more-you-get-share-exchange-and-grow/