Intellectual Property

Of all classes this semester, Innovation in the Marketplace stands out as the most philosophical one. Eric von Hippel is either a great professor or a great magician! He takes takes a topic, turns it upside down and makes it stand on its head. Sometimes my brain is trying to resist his logic (that can't be right, professor!), but in the end his logic really make sense. Take for example, the "lead-user innovation" concept. In some industries, the lead-users, not the manufacturers are the ones who innovate most. For example, when it comes to scientific instruments, 77% of the innovations were concieved by the advanced users of those instruments. Manufacturers tend to develop dimension-of-merit innovations while users are the ones who tend to develop the novel functional capabilities. His logic made me think about my own experiences as an innovating lead user. Ha! That's exactly what I did when I made that little ProgramIC board. I was a lead-user myself and didn't even know it! But wait! The story goes on. My idea didn't go unnoticed. It wasn't long before the big manufacturer took notice and developed one of its own. Just like von Hippel would predict...

But the most controversial topic is the intellectual property topic. Von Hippel assertion is that intellectual property protection is no longer serving the purpose for which it was originally designed: to stiumlate innovation by protecting the innovator's idea from being copied. As it turns out, IP protection has the opposite effect in industries like biotech and software. The chance to discover new drugs, for example, are reduced when a firm has to license tens of patents before it can proceed. IP in this case will stifle innovation!

This had many of us scratching our heads. You mean, the society is better off without IP protection? That's exactly what von Hippel is trying to assert...