Comments on: When You Don’t Want Ideas to Spread

By: Tim

Tim — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 21:47:59 +0000

It sure does!

By: Sam

Sam — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 21:47:11 +0000

Yeah I am sure it is.

I suppose the strategy also points to the limits of patents in protecting IP?

By: Tim

Tim — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 07:31:59 +0000

Both reasons probably motivate that. Sure leaves an opening for someone to compete on openness though. I guess it’s an oligopoly/monopoly type market though, eh?

By: Sam

Sam — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 07:15:14 +0000

An interesting one I’ve seen is with gas turbines. A while back I was doing a site visit at a local power station and the maintenance engineer who was showing us around mentioned that the firm who manufactured the gas turbine forbid them from opening up the turbine for maintenance. If the turbine needs maintenance that requires opening up the turbine the OEM flies in technicians. The maintenance engineer said that the OEM argued that they introduced these bans to prevent people from appropriating their IP inside the turbines. However I am guessing that having a monopoly on any large maintenance tasks might also be a good motivator.

By: Tim

Tim — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 06:46:43 +0000

Thanks for the input Ivan. I think that the situation that you’re describing is one where people are still trying to profit from asymmetrical information. I wonder how much longer it can last? I’m not as familiar with the situation in Chile, though I’ve learned a little bit about Brazil through supervising a student that did some outstanding research on biotech there.

By: Ivan Silva

Ivan Silva — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 06:34:02 +0000

I have seen many examples of ideas not spreading. In Latin America, for example, the academic “elite” and big firms do not spread the idea of innovation as aggressively compared to more developed countries. It appears “convenient” in these economies to have the contributing few control the generation of new ideas and how they are spread. Evidence of this can be seen in the lack of empirical research available regarding innovation and entrepreneurship in this region of the world.

Great topic, Tim…Thanks for your contribution to my article and it reminds me very much about conspiracy theories that I used to read about as a young student that relate to suppressed innovations or inventions….regards.

By: Tim

Tim — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 05:28:27 +0000

That’s a good point – I think they are both built on scarcity models. I can’t see how things like the DVD region codes, or parallel import laws for books in Australia will last much longer though. Unless the financial crisis pushes back towards mercantilism…

The national firewalls are definitely a concern. I am still a bit gobsmacked that the Aussie one has gotten as far as it has.

By: Phillip Long

Phillip Long — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 23:37:16 +0000

Most of the biz models that rely on ignorance seem to come from two directions. The first is the rapidly disappearing paradigm of information scarcity -if info is hard to get I can sell access to it and you’ll pay rather than go through the arduous effort I did to amass it in the first place.

Second, imposed monopolis – the zone codes for DVDs for example are imposed by the MPAA under I assume the notion that the economy really isn’t global, at least in their eyes. So you must preserve the economic asymmetries as long as you can.

The increasing threat of regionalization by geopolitical boundaries imposed on the ‘net’ is worrisome though. When countries like Australia seriously consider imposing obligatory filtering in the name of ANYTHING, we’re all in trouble.

-pdl-