In a commentary in the Financial Times on Monday, MIT’s Eric von Hipple and Michael Schrage set out to convince Europe that it should bet its economy on user-innovation, but proved Schrage’s own Law of Good Ideas – There is no idea so good that it’s not pushed well past the point of its diminishing returns – instead.
The two have done a lot of great analysis of the concepts of user-innovation, open source models, hyperinnovation, and iterative capital. But instead of putting them in their historical and economic context, the two suggest that user-innovation is the only real source of innovation today, is being crippled by government strictures, and is the savior of the sluggish European innovation factory.
Today, the Financial Times ran a letter from ACT president Jonathan Zuck responding to the piece. In the letter, Zuck writes:
They suggest that the European Union should rework its laws and procurement policies to give “parity” to “user-generated” innovation. However, at no point do Prof von Hippel and Mr Schrage provide any concrete examples of ways that innovation is being thwarted by “institutional strictures and intellectual property constraints”. In fact, they only demonstrate how this kind of innovation is taking off throughout the world economy, even within proprietary companies.
Most important, however, the authors neglect the fact that the policy changes they are suggesting would harm incentives for revolutionary innovations that truly create new markets and grow economies. Small companies such as Astron Clinica depend on patents and other forms of intellectual property to raise the capital necessary to develop revolutionary new technologies. In fact, many of the user-innovators Prof von Hippel and Mr Schrage discuss would be likely to protect their innovations in order to ensure their efforts were rewarded. It would truly be a shame if the MRI hackers praised by the authors did not have the heavily patent-dependent MRI machine to hack.
User-generated innovation has been a part of the technological process since the beginning of time. Stretching the idea of “user-generated” innovation into the saviour of the European economy, would clearly produce diminished returns and possibly threaten real economic growth.
In the end, this piece is very reminiscent of the same grand claims and weak supporting evidence being made by the European Commission’s FLOSS paper, which Braden Cox and Steve DelBianco analyzed earlier this year.