Curious Exceptions? Open Source Software and "Open" Technology

Abstract

Key Terms in this Chapter

Dissipation: We call dissipation an innovation model that mobilizes (or “burns”) more resources than those actually used to produce the outcome. Dissipation is typical of self-organizing and explorative organizations.

User Community: An innovation model where a community of users of a particular product are the main source of innovation and where innovations are normally freely shared within the community.

Collective Invention: An innovation model in which private firms engaged in the production or use of a specific good freely share one another’s inventions and other pertinent technical information.

Sustainability: We call sustainable an innovation model that re-creates over time the premises for its own reproduction, that is, if it is endowed with a mechanism able to re-create incentives for the participants to continually invest in innovation. In this sense, the patent system as well as the public-funded research system can be conceived as sustainable.

Intrinsic/Extrinsic Motivations: When an activity is undertaken because it enhances agents’ utility directly, the underlying incentives are intrinsic because the actions they trigger have an intrinsic value for the agent. On the contrary, when an action is undertaken instrumentally to reach other goals, the motivations behind the action are defined as extrinsic because the increase of the individual’s utility is not due to action itself, but to its consequences.