Wednesday, January 06, 2010

Professor's Baldwin and von Hipple IV A

Before the Christmas break we were reviewing a paper from Professor's Carliss Baldwin and Eric von Hipple. Our review was comprehensive as the majority of the material is pertinent to both the development of People, Ideas & Objects software and associated Community of Independent Service Providers, (CISP) and the innovative oil and gas producer. The title of the paper "Modelling a Paradigm Shift: From Producer Innovation to User and Open Collaborative Innovation". To date there are three blog posts reviewing this paper here, here and here. Reintroducing this work by reviewing the three posts, re-highlighting the papers abstract, and finally adding some of the papers definitions will help refresh our memory of this very pertinent work.

In this paper we assess the economic viability of innovation by producers relative to two increasingly important alternative models: innovations by single user individuals or firms, and open collaborative innovation projects. We analyze the design costs and architectures and communication costs associated with each model. We conclude that innovation by individual users and also open collaborative innovation increasingly compete with - and may displace – producer innovation in many parts of the economy. We argue that a transition from producer innovation to open single user and open collaborative innovation is desirable in terms of social welfare, and so worthy of support by policymakers.
We see the value that this paper has to this community, not only in defining how this community operates, but also the validity for the CISP participants investing their careers, and how the innovative oil and gas producer can approach the scope of their organizational constraints. I expect to have the next installment of this paper completed within the next week. This involves the review of their analysis of the three different models of innovation, or section 3 "Where is each model viable."

It may also be of value to review our 2010 budget to see how the user within the CISP generates their own economic value. They are compensated for their work in designing and contributing to the development of the software. And secondly, their use of the finished software application is available to them as members of the CISP, free of charge. Their use of the software is part of the value adding services they provide to their innovative oil and gas clients. People, Ideas & Objects generates our Fees and Penalties from the producers that benefit from this software. These charges are assessed based on our business model.

Baldwin & von Hipple's Definitions
A single use innovator is a single firm or individual that creates an innovation in order to use it.
A producer innovator is a single, non-collaborating firm.
An open collaborative innovation project involves contributors who share the work of generating a design and also reveal the outputs from their individuals and collective design efforts openly for anyone to use. The defining properties of this model are twofold: (1) the participants are not rivals with respect to the innovative design (otherwise they would not collaborate) and (2) they do not individually or collectively plan to sell products or services incorporating the innovation or intellectual property rights related to it. An example of such a project is an open source software project.
A design is a set of instructions that specify how to produce a novel product or service.
A given mode of innovation is viable with respect to a particular innovation opportunity if the innovator or each participant in a group of innovators finds it worthwhile to incur the requisite costs to gain the anticipated value of the innovation. By focusing on anticipated benefits and costs we assume that potential innovators are rational actors who can forecast the likely effects of their design effort and choose whether or not to expend the effort (Simon, 1981; Langlois, 1986b; Jensen and Meckling, 1994; Scott, 2001).
Our definitions of viability is related to: the contracting view of economic organizations; to the concept of solvency in finance; and to the concept of equilibrium in institutional game theory.
In contracting literature, firms and other organizations are viewed as a "nexus of contracts,", that is, a set of voluntary agreements (Alchian and Demsetz, 1972; Jensen and Meckling, 1976; Fama and Jensen, 1983a, b; Demsetz, 1988; Hart, 1995). For the firm or organization to continue in existence, each party must perceive himself or herself to be better off with the contracting relationship than outside of it.
We define an innovation opportunity as the opportunity to create a new design. With respect to a particular innovation opportunity, each of the three models of innovation may be viable or not, depending on the benefits and costs flowing to the actors.
In terms of benefits, we define the value of an innovation, V, as the benefit that a party expects to gain from converting an innovation opportunity into a new design - the recipe - and then turning the design into a useful product, process or service.
Each innovation opportunity has four generic costs: design cost, communication cost, production cost and transaction cost.
Design cost, d, is the cost of creating the design for an innovation.
  1. The cost of identifying the functional requirements (that is, what the design is supposed to do); 
  2. The cost of dividing the overall problem into sub-problems, which can be solved separately;
  3. The cost of solving the sub-problems;
  4. the cost of recombining the sub-problems' solutions into a functioning whole.
Communication cost, c, is the cost of transferring design related information among participants in different organizations during the design process.
Production cost, u, is the cost of carrying out the design instructions to produce the specified good or service.
Transaction cost, t, is the cost of establishing property rights and engaging in compensated exchanges of property.
Please join us here.

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Tuesday, January 05, 2010

2010 Budget and Planning

As promised the 2010 Budget and Plans are set. This post will highlight the aspects of "what" and "how" this is being undertaken. Further discussion is encouraged by contacting me by email or the "Call Me" feature on the bottom left column of this blog.

First off is the objectives for 2010. Completion of the Preliminary Specification was mentioned yesterday. The Preliminary Specification is a collaboration of the end user community. It's cost is based on 100 "People" years of effort and will determine two key components; the scope of the application modules and the detailed analysis of the oil and gas business in a comprehensive, codified manner. The two constraints placed on this development are they must use the Draft Specification as it's starting point and be focused exclusively on the business of oil and gas. Technology is not part of this specifications deliverable. The only technological requirement will be the generation of stories in line with the agile manifesto.

We seek to capture the ways and means of the optimal innovative oil and gas producer in the Preliminary Specification. The understanding of the industry is beyond the scope of a handful of contributors and involves multiple disciplines. The collaborative output of the Preliminary Specification will be well beyond the scope of one individuals understanding of the industry. Therefore clarification and compromise will be a necessary and difficult part of the process. Using advanced business techniques focused on the conflicts and contradictions that arise, the output will resolve many of the issues within the industry and its application to the Draft Specification. This is a business design process that will involve literally everyone and anyone with experience and understanding of the oil and gas industry. More specifically it is a place where people can contribute their ideas and build their own service based offering in support of the innovative oil and gas producer and users of the developing People, Ideas & Objects software.

Contributors to the Preliminary Specification are invited to join this development through this process. Users will be compensated for their contributions. I have allocated an average $125.00 U.S. / hour for user contributions. Each of the 100 People years is determined on an eight hour day and 220 days per year. 30% of the $10 million budget is allocated to users. The total population of users may possibly number in the thousands of individuals. This will not be a full time task for any of users, and it is anticipated that no one would be required to leave their current positions in order to contribute to these developments. Subscribing producers are encouraged to second their human resources to this process in order to ensure their unique business needs are met by the Community of Independent Service Providers and the software itself.

Additional financial resources are budgeted in the support of this developing community. Maintenance of the private wiki where these postings will reside, in addition to the multitude of other support requirements; requires we allocate an equal amount of resources to support the community. The remaining 40% of our budget is allocated to overhead, organizational development, preparation & testing of the technological architecture, and the software configurations themselves.

As indicated the time frame for completion of this critical community development and specification delivery is the end of the 2010 calendar year. The determination that 100 People years is adequate is a judgment call made based on my experience and understanding of the oil and gas industry. I anticipate that towards the end of 2010 we may be consuming as much as one People year with each day of development.

As always, please join us here.

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Monday, January 04, 2010

2010 Funding Policies and Procedure

Establishing 2010 as the year that this project stops the passage of time without consequence. We have a problem in oil and gas. That problems definition, size and scope is generally understood and agreed to. The current oil and gas companies organization models are unable to meet our needs and they are certainly not positioned to address our future. And by "our" future it is intended to define societies future. For this reason we need to move to begin the development of the Preliminary Specification, and have it completed in 2010. The next blog post will document the budget and planning necessary for this to occur. Key to attaining these goals is the scope of the effort has been determined to be 100 "People" years. People years is the same as the gendered "man" years in defining what the effort is. With statement of these goals it is necessary that we create the mechanisms to raise this money.

The budget will also document that the 2010 capital requirements total $10 million. By stating this it shows the serious nature of properly identifying the user community. The May 2004 Preliminary Research Report documents the issues the oil and gas industry is currently facing. The document also establishes the accuracy of the research that has been conducted in this weblog. Now that management of the oil and gas companies understand these issues, they should also understand the need to act.

Therefore I want to reiterate that the targets for funding these developments are primarily to the shareholders and oil and gas investors. They are the ones that have been adversely affected by managements co-opting the governance frameworks to better secure their existence. Clearly investors want and need an alternative governance and organizational method to build and manage their oil and gas assets. People, Ideas & Objects makes these changes in the Compliance & Governance Module of the Draft Specification. Our secondary markets are the National Oil Companies like Pemex, Petronas and Saudi Aramco. Quasi governments and corporations who hold the dual role of managing their countries oil and gas resources. Lastly our openness of communications enable the International Oil Companies and Independent producers to contact us and participate. The benefit in being part of this development is to have their unique organizational needs met by the software being built, and the CISP's service based offerings. Lastly Start-ups, primarily due to their lack of any substantial production, are also welcomed to this development.

Fees for 2010 have been set at $1.00 / BOE / Day. (A producer that produces 50,000 / boe / day would be assessed $50,000 for 2010). These fees are due and payable on or before March 31, 2010. Invoices will not be provided outside of this blog post. We are also establishing a Penalty component as follows: 1) Penalties are assessed on March 31 of the current year. Penalties are 300% of the years fees. 2) Any participant to this development will need to make up any and all Fees and Penalties back to January 1, 2010. Therefore if a producer joins in 2012, they will need to pay the Fees and Penalties of 2010, 2011 and 2012 before they would be entitled to participate in these communities, developments, or use of the software. Choosing to wait to join this development will preclude the communities and developments ability to cater to the producers needs. As time passes the inertia of these developments will make it progressively more difficult for one firm to address the scope of their development needs. 

The Business Model of People, Ideas & Objects provides substantial value to our subscribing producer firms. The basis of these developments uses the cost - plus model. Where these costs are amortized over the participating producers, once. Our objective, and that of the Community of Independent Service Providers (CISP) is to provide the innovative oil and gas producer with the most profitable means of oil and gas exploration and production.

Management may want to sit back and continue to belittle this process. Noting that it doesn't have this and hasn't got that. That it is a start-up with no proven record of delivering any commercial software. If the research, business model, user focus, using the Joint Operating Committee as the key organizational construct, and our understanding of the oil and gas industry from a business point of view doesn't sell you, nothing will. Our competitors will be far better at selling you the next great technology that comically brings you closer to your customers.

To participate please contact me at this email or call me by selecting the "Call Me" service on the bottom of the left hand column. And for those individuals interested in joining, please join us here.

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Saturday, January 02, 2010

2009 Year in Review

Starting off 2010 it's important to highlight some of the 2009 developments of this project. 2009 was our first full year of community development. It is clear that using the Joint Operating Committee resonates with many of those who work in oil and gas. Through analysis of the numbers of subscribers to this blogs feed. Shows the community is large and engaged with the content. Another point that is clear is the risk of being seen to be active and committing to this process. We are well aware of the consequences of being too early and too closely affiliated with these ideas. Management of the oil and gas companies want nothing to do with this development, or with the people associated with it. Keeping the community anonymous, in addition to its further development is our number one priority for 2010.

Our second priority for 2010 is to secure our budget and implement our plans for the development of the Preliminary Specification. The budget and plan will be posted here in the next few days. Securing the financial resources to proceed with tangible developments is necessary for further community development.

Highlights of the past year.

  • A general understanding the issues in oil and gas production and exploration are substantial. Over the next 20 years, companies such as Exxon, have quantified the scope of these issues as being an additional $20 trillion. This requires a different approach.
  • Oracle Corporation released their Oracle Fusion product offering. Oracle's activities in this area have been an unknown in the oil and gas ERP marketplace. This unknown has had the effect of freezing the decision making process of producers. Two things stand out in Oracle's offering. One is Oracle's comical desire for the oil and gas producer to get closer to it's customers. And possibly fatally, Oracle has spent $39 billion in capital in the Fusion investment. Both of these points show that Oracle needs further development to meet the needs of the innovative oil and gas producer.
  • Professor Oliver Williamson's winning of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics. Much of the Draft Specification uses the theories and ideas of Williamson and others. I find the awarding of the prize brings substantial credibility to the Draft Specification, and hence to it's community of users.
  • Clarification and confirmation of the targeted market for these software applications and communities services. Through the development of this community it has become clear that the software offerings and services appeal to International Oil Companies (IOC's), National Oil Companies (NOC's), Independent Oil and Gas Companies and Start-up producer firms.
People, Ideas & Objects future is bright. We understand that people who are interested in joining this Community might only be able to contribute a few hours per week, so please join us here.

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Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Our tradition with Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is that time again to review my favorite author and share a specifc article of his works. This also marks the fourth full year of posting on this blog.

This year I have selected Emerson's first book "Nature" as this years reading. As with all of his works I find his writing inspiring and more topical today. Nature does not disappoint. Enjoy!

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Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Professor Paul Romer, Endogenous Technical Change

We are in the middle of a comprehensive review of Professor's Carliss Baldwin and Eric von Hipple new working paper "Modelling a Paradigm Shift: From Producer Innovation to User and Open Collaborative Innovation". In the last post we learned that innovation within the community of People, Ideas & Objects is considered "a non-rival good: each participant in a collaborative effort gets the value of the whole design, but incurs only a fraction of the design cost." Music to my ears and a definitive benefit when a user considers their potential involvement in this community.

In a related document, Professor Paul Romer's October 1990 "Endogenous Technical Change"  discusses the impact of these non-rival goods impact on economic growth.

Growth in this model is driven by technological change that arises from international investment decisions made by profit-maximizing agents. The distinguishing feature of the technology as an input it that it is neither a conventional good nor a public good; it is a non-rival, partiallyexcludable good.
These non-rival goods are being codified in the Draft Specification and developed by this community in the Preliminary Specification. The community will also develop their value adding service offerings, to be used with the People, Ideas & Objects software applications they've developed, in providing their producer clients with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. I'd like to see Oracle compete with that.

What I want to highlight is Professor Romer's note that mankind's progress was constrained for a long period of time. Not until we were able to rise above the grind of working for our basic needs did we move forward.
This result offers one possible way to explain the wide variation in growth rates observed among countries and the fact that in some countries growth in income percapita has been close to zero. This explanation is reminiscent of the explanation for the absence of growth in prehistoric time that is offered by some historians and anthropologists: civilization, and hence growth, could not begin until human capital could be spared from the production of goods for immediate consumption.
Taken in this context it is clear to me that the community and these software applications have the capacity to significantly increase the productivity of the oil and gas producer. Our way of economic organizations have brought us to the point where we are today. To move forward in the future we need to revisit the ways in which we conduct business. And that is my desire for the oil and gas industry with this blog, software and communities development. What Romer has to state on this point is clearly beneficial for all concerned.
The most interesting positive implication of the model is that an economy with a large stock of human capital will experience faster growth. This finding suggests that free international trade can act to speed up growth. It also suggests a way to understand what it is about developed economies in the twentieth century that permitted rates of growth of income percapita that are unprecedented in history.
We stand on the shoulders of giants and begin a process of such great potential. Please join me here in 2010.

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Monday, December 21, 2009

McKinsey, Strategy Through Turbulence

I can not reflect on the past four years on this blog without closing out the year by noting the significant contribution that McKinsey Consulting have provided us. This is the 64th article that I have written about here on this blog. And more then just the numbers, the topical nature and focus on the changing business times that we find ourselves in. They have done a great service to their clients and I think they have established themselves as the number one consulting firm for the twenty-first century.

This article is a brief eight minute video that summarizes everything that we stand for here at People, Ideas & Objects. The opportunities, turmoil and change are all themes that underlie the research and system specifications. It is of Professor Don Sull of the London Business School. Who talks clearly about the times we face. He also has a new book that I would recommend putting on your reading list as well. Enjoy!

(Embedded video may not render, please see the original McKinsey site.)



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Thursday, December 17, 2009

Data and the Military

People, Ideas & Objects have define a Technical Vision that identifies and works to mitigate a technical issue that all areas of society need to address. The issue is the ballooning of data. Noted in National Defence Magazine an article entitled "Military Swimming in Sensors and Drowing in Data" it is stated “The appetite never seems to slow down.” As the energy industry is mostly based on the science of physics, chemistry and biology, it is believed this data growth will fuel innovative use and application in the industry. Those firms that have the capacity and ability to deal with this volume of data will have competitive and financial benefits arise from this capability, but only if this software development and community are funded.

The Community of Independent Service Providers and People, Ideas & Objects - Technical Vision suggests four cornerstone technologies enable this data explosion. At the same time, these technologies provide the ability to deal with the problem / opportunity. The four technologies are;

  1. Object based technologies, and particularly Java.
  2. Asynchronous Process Management.
  3. IPv6
  4. Wireless.

Further information on the Technical Vision can be found here.

Today's blog of Richard Fernandez notes this issue is affecting the U.S. Military. And of particular concern, is today's Wall Street Journal video of how Predator Drones have been monitored by insurgents. (If that specific URL doesn't work, search WSJ's video site for Predator Drones.) This issue of the Predator Drones is also noted in Fernandez's second blog post.

Some may note "This explosion of data has occurred for the better part of the last 40 years. Computers have always presented this difficulty and the energy industry will address this problem as it has before." I hope not, because the volume of data and the ability to use that data are something that will have to be purpose built and dynamic. What can be monitored can also be controlled.

People, Ideas & Objects has listed this Technical Vision as the manner in which this community will approach the problem. By exploiting the advantages and having the commercial benefits accrue to those that have a handle on them, I think, will be the difference between success and failure in the oil and gas industry. Critical to the success of the oil and gas producer will be this change oriented and innovation supporting community and application.

The Draft Specification considers a scenario where the use of this type of data and the ability to manage it is possible in a fundamentally more profitable way. The example is the manner in which energy prices can dictate, on a pre-determined and agreed too basis, at what price level would trigger the production was scaled back. If prices were to drop a predetermined percentage, then the production would be autonomously scaled back by X%. And these decisions could be executed on an iterative basis to fully exploit the reserves of the specific Joint Operating Committee (JOC).

These are business decisions that can be made by the Joint Operating Committee as it holds the legal and operational decision making control of the reserves underlying the property in question. (And something today's bureaucracies can not even begin to consider.) If the JOC has the authority, and the legal agreements consider this opportunity, then the industry can move from a price-taker to a price-maker position. This last point should be coming more evident as a necessity in the industry. Leaving everything to produce at 100% and then watch the prices drop year after year must get a little tiring. Only a fool would continue to sell his resources at a price less then its cost. And in an escalating cost environment, we have many managers who know they do not have the tools to deal with this problem, and yet will not support this software development project and associated community.

If it is generally agreed by the producers that an additional $20 trillion will be spent on oil and gas operations in the next 20 years. I would suggest the producers attain these types of capabilities so that they can prove to their shareholders they have the capabilities to address these difficulties and profit from them. Or is it really assumed that the bureaucracies can exist in that prospective environment, and provide returns to those outside of their own management team. Please join me here.

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Monday, December 14, 2009

Professor's Baldwin and von Hipple III

The third part of our review of the Baldwin and von Hipple paper focuses on the literature review. It is in this section of the paper that the issue of Intellectual Property is raised. Baldwin and von Hipple write what most people would consider to be factual in understanding how innovations are developed.
When taken together, the findings of all these empirical studies make it very clear that users have long been and are doing a lot of commercially-significant process development and product modification in many fields.
Let us first gain an understanding of what the authors define as Users. This user description is not different from what we are employing here at People, Ideas & Objects.
Users, as we define the term, are firms or individual consumers that expect to benefit from using a design, a product or a service. In contrast, producers expect to benefit from selling a design, a product, or a service. Innovation user and innovation producer are thus two general "functional" relationships between innovator and innovation. Users are unique in that they alone benefit directly from innovation. Producers must sell innovation-related products or services to users, hence the value of innovation to producers is derived from users willingness to pay. Thus, in order to profit, inventors must sell or license knowledge related to their new design, manufacture and sell goods embodying the innovations; or deliver and sell services incorporating complementing the innovations.
Users have unlimited access to the Intellectual Property that is developed by People, Ideas & Objects and the community. This IP, and all associated ideas, are a product of the User community and freely available for the user community to employ in their own service offering to their oil and gas clients. The only limitation for users is the ability to run the binary of the software is limited to People, Ideas & Objects exclusively. Also only licensed users who are active in the community will have access to the software, ideas and knowledge held within the community. Creating an exclusive service offering who's focus is to provide the oil and gas producer with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations.

The users then earn their fees in providing the services and software to oil and gas producers. Users are licensed to access this information based on their own skills and provide those services to their oil and gas producer clients at no charge for the software or the access to the underlying IP. (Users bill their clients for their services.) Clearly the involvement of a user within this community is critical to the success of the project, as we discussed yesterday. And this success provides the users with a means to pursue their career in the most effective manner that they see fit. Why do we do this.
Reexaminations of traditional economic arguments triggered by evidence of free revealing show that innovators generally freely reveal for two economically rational reasons. First, it is in practice difficult to effectively protect most innovations via secrecy or intellectual property rights. Second, significant private benefits often accrue to innovators that do freely reveal their innovations.
The Draft Specification is designed around eleven modules. Professor's Baldwin, Langlois and Williamson have defined the benefits of modularity and the importance of modular designs. Here the authors provide a good summary of how modularity fits within this project.
Modularity is important for collaboration in design because separate modules can be worked on independently and in parallel, without intense ongoing communication across modules. Designers working on different modules in a large system do not have to be colocated, but can still create a system in which the parts can be integrated and will function together as a whole. In small projects or within modules, designers can utilize “actionable transparency” rather than modularity to achieve coordination. When projects are small, each designer’s activities are “transparent” to his or her collaborators. In open collaborative projects, modularity and actionable transparency generally go hand in hand, with both factors contributing to the divisibility of tasks (Colfer, 2009).
Here in this last quotation is the real value of the CISP. The value of participating in this community is reflected in the name People, Ideas & Objects. Ideas are non-rival and therefore participation brings about the greatest attributes of ideas for all involved. Ideas are able to build on the prior knowledge and the many innovations and ideas that came before it. Having the communities ideas and innovation backed up by a user driven software development capability, only makes this more worthwhile for the members of the community and their oil and gas producer clients.
Building on arguments of Ghosh (1998), Raymond (1999), and von Hippel and von Krogh (2003), Baldwin and Clark (2006 b) showed formally that, if communication costs are low relative to design costs, then any degree of modularity suffices to cause rational innovators that do not compete with respect to the design being developed to prefer collaborative innovation over independent innovation. This result hinges on the fact that the innovative design itself is a non-rival good: each participant in a collaborative effort gets the value of the whole design, but incurs only a fraction of the design cost.
Please join me here.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Professor's Baldwin and von Hipple II

I want to expand on Professor's Carliss Baldwin and Eric von Hippel's paper that we recently started reviewing. I think this paper is critical in defining many of the attributes of this software development project, and will add value with new insight and information. Specifically, in applying the findings in this paper I hope to prove to the User community that this type of project is less risky from the point of view of them investing their time and efforts in participating. The pace of this paper's review will be thorough and complete. Limiting our review in this second installment to just the Introduction and Overview.

As background information, People, Ideas & Objects software applications are marrying the User groups that define their needs in the software, with the software developers. This relationship is permanent and maintains the project in a constant state of change based on the users innovations. Software is not a destination but is best considered a journey. Users of People, Ideas & Objects applications are those that use this software in combination with their own service operations. The Community of Independent Service Providers derive their revenue from both the producers that employ them for their services and from People, Ideas & Objects for the work the users do in designing, implementing and working on development of the software. Creating an environment where the users are key in every aspect and element of this community.

This change oriented and innovation based community will generate their own innovations. In addition the People, Ideas & Objects software needs to mirror the needs of the producers who are iterating on the earth science and engineering innovations involved in oil and gas. The point I want to make is the users commitment to this community involves substantial risk and a comprehensive career commitment. Of the three models of innovation People, Ideas & Objects and the Community of Independent Service Providers fall into the authors "open collaborative model".
Our analysis will lead us to conclude that innovation by individual users and also open collaborative innovation are modes of innovating that increasingly compete with and may displace producer innovation in may parts of the economy.
We will argue that when it is technologically feasible, the transition from closed producer or single user innovation to open single user or collaborative innovation is also desirable in terms of social welfare, hence worthy of support by policy-makers. This is due to the free dissemination of innovation designs associated with the open model. Open innovation generates innovation without exclusivity or monopoly, and so should improve social welfare other things equal.
This last quote is in line with why this project is called People, Ideas & Objects. It is derivative of Professor Paul Romer's new growth theory of People, Ideas & Things. Which states in the virtual world ideas can be used by many people without diminishing the value to anyone else. The important take away for me was that we are needing exponential volumes of ideas to expand our economy. How these ideas are vetted, developed and implemented is the topic of Professor Baldwin and von Hipple's paper and this software development.

Users need to understand that the success of this project is wholly dependent on their involvement. This paper provides evidence that this mode of open collaborative innovation is preferable, "should improve social welfare" and will be successful. Therefore mitigating their risks in investing their time and efforts in this community. I think this provides the user with the most sound and economic basis for their review of this project from the point of view evaluating their investment in this model. Please join me here.

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