Open disclosure of innovations, incentives and follow-on reuse: theory on processes of cumulative innovation and a field experiment in computational biology

Boudreau, K and Lakhani, K R (2015) Open disclosure of innovations, incentives and follow-on reuse: theory on processes of cumulative innovation and a field experiment in computational biology. Research Policy, 44 (Feb). pp. 4-19. ISSN 0048-7333

Abstract

Most of society's innovation systems – academic science, the patent system, open source, etc. – are “open” in the sense that they are designed to facilitate knowledge disclosure among innovators. An essential difference across innovation systems is whether disclosure is of intermediate progress and solutions or of completed innovations. We theorize and present experimental evidence linking intermediate versus final disclosure to an ‘incentives-versus-reuse’ tradeoff and to a transformation of the innovation search process. We find intermediate disclosure has the advantage of efficiently steering development towards improving existing solution approaches, but also has the effect of limiting experimentation and narrowing technological search. We discuss the comparative advantages of intermediate versus final disclosure policies in fostering innovation.

More Details

Item Type: Article
Subject Areas: Strategy and Entrepreneurship
Additional Information:

© 2015 Elsevier B V

Date Deposited: 02 Mar 2016 18:51
Subjects: Technological innovation
Last Modified: 02 Dec 2024 02:57
URI: https://lbsresearch.london.edu/id/eprint/177
More

Export and Share


Download

Full text not available from this repository.

Statistics

Altmetrics
View details on Dimensions' website

Downloads from LBS Research Online

View details

Actions (login required)

Edit Item Edit Item