The Democratization of Invention

The Democratization of Invention PDF Author: B. Zorina Khan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521811354
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
This book, first published in 2005, examines the evolution and impact of American intellectual property rights during the 'long nineteenth century'.

The Democratization of Invention

The Democratization of Invention PDF Author: B. Zorina Khan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521811354
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book, first published in 2005, examines the evolution and impact of American intellectual property rights during the 'long nineteenth century'.

FabLab

FabLab PDF Author: Julia Walter-Herrmann
Publisher: transcript Verlag
ISBN: 3839423821
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
Ten years after the first FabLab (a so called fabrication laboratory) was opened at MIT, more than 120 FabLabs exist all over the world. Today, it is time to look back at a decade of FabLab activities. This book shows how small production devices, such as laser cutters and 3D printers, and dedicated educationists, researchers and FabLab practitioners transform the fields of learning, work, production, design, maker culture, law and science on a global scale. In this composition experts from various countries, such as Germany, India or the USA, and distinguished academic institutions, such as MIT or Stanford University, discuss theoretical questions and introduce practical approaches concerning FabLab activities.

Democratizing Innovation

Democratizing Innovation PDF Author: Eric Von Hippel
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262250179
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
The process of user-centered innovation: how it can benefit both users and manufacturers and how its emergence will bring changes in business models and in public policy. Innovation is rapidly becoming democratized. Users, aided by improvements in computer and communications technology, increasingly can develop their own new products and services. These innovating users—both individuals and firms—often freely share their innovations with others, creating user-innovation communities and a rich intellectual commons. In Democratizing Innovation, Eric von Hippel looks closely at this emerging system of user-centered innovation. He explains why and when users find it profitable to develop new products and services for themselves, and why it often pays users to reveal their innovations freely for the use of all.The trend toward democratized innovation can be seen in software and information products—most notably in the free and open-source software movement—but also in physical products. Von Hippel's many examples of user innovation in action range from surgical equipment to surfboards to software security features. He shows that product and service development is concentrated among "lead users," who are ahead on marketplace trends and whose innovations are often commercially attractive. Von Hippel argues that manufacturers should redesign their innovation processes and that they should systematically seek out innovations developed by users. He points to businesses—the custom semiconductor industry is one example—that have learned to assist user-innovators by providing them with toolkits for developing new products. User innovation has a positive impact on social welfare, and von Hippel proposes that government policies, including R&D subsidies and tax credits, should be realigned to eliminate biases against it. The goal of a democratized user-centered innovation system, says von Hippel, is well worth striving for. An electronic version of this book is available under a Creative Commons license.

Inventing the Industrial Revolution

Inventing the Industrial Revolution PDF Author: Christine MacLeod
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521893992
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
This book examines the development of the English patent system and its relationship with technical change during the period between 1660 and 1800, when the patent system evolved from an instrument of royal patronage into one of commercial competition among the inventors and manufacturers of the Industrial Revolution. It analyses the legal and political framework within which patenting took place and gives an account of the motivations and fortunes of patentees, who obtained patents for a variety of purposes beyond the simple protection of an invention. It includes the first in-depth attempt to gauge the reliability of the patent statistics as a measure of inventive activity and technical change in the early part of the Industrial Revolution, and suggests that the distribution of patents is a better guide to the advance of capitalism than to the centres of inventive activity. It also queries the common assumption that the chief goal of inventors was to save labour, and examines contemporary criticism of the patent system in the light of the changing conceptualisation of invention among natural scientists and political economists.

The Invention of Creativity

The Invention of Creativity PDF Author: Andreas Reckwitz
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745697070
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Contemporary society has seen an unprecedented rise in both the demand and the desire to be creative, to bring something new into the world. Once the reserve of artistic subcultures, creativity has now become a universal model for culture and an imperative in many parts of society. In this new book, cultural sociologist Andreas Reckwitz investigates how the ideal of creativity has grown into a major social force, from the art of the avant-garde and postmodernism to the ‘creative industries’ and the innovation economy, the psychology of creativity and self-growth, the media representation of creative stars, and the urban design of ‘creative cities’. Where creativity is often assumed to be a force for good, Reckwitz looks critically at how this imperative has developed from the 1970s to the present day. Though we may well perceive creativity as the realization of some natural and innate potential within us, it has rather to be understood within the structures of a very specific culture of the new in late modern society. The Invention of Creativity is a bold and refreshing counter to conventional wisdom that shows how our age is defined by radical and restrictive processes of social aestheticization. It will be of great interest to those working in a variety of disciplines, from cultural and social theory to art history and aesthetics.

The Ethics of Invention: Technology and the Human Future

The Ethics of Invention: Technology and the Human Future PDF Author: Sheila Jasanoff
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393253856
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
We live in a world increasingly governed by technology—but to what end? Technology rules us as much as laws do. It shapes the legal, social, and ethical environments in which we act. Every time we cross a street, drive a car, or go to the doctor, we submit to the silent power of technology. Yet, much of the time, the influence of technology on our lives goes unchallenged by citizens and our elected representatives. In The Ethics of Invention, renowned scholar Sheila Jasanoff dissects the ways in which we delegate power to technological systems and asks how we might regain control. Our embrace of novel technological pathways, Jasanoff shows, leads to a complex interplay among technology, ethics, and human rights. Inventions like pesticides or GMOs can reduce hunger but can also cause unexpected harm to people and the environment. Often, as in the case of CFCs creating a hole in the ozone layer, it takes decades before we even realize that any damage has been done. Advances in biotechnology, from GMOs to gene editing, have given us tools to tinker with life itself, leading some to worry that human dignity and even human nature are under threat. But despite many reasons for caution, we continue to march heedlessly into ethically troubled waters. As Jasanoff ranges across these and other themes, she challenges the common assumption that technology is an apolitical and amoral force. Technology, she masterfully demonstrates, can warp the meaning of democracy and citizenship unless we carefully consider how to direct its power rather than let ourselves be shaped by it. The Ethics of Invention makes a bold argument for a future in which societies work together—in open, democratic dialogue—to debate not only the perils but even more the promises of technology.

The Battle Over Patents

The Battle Over Patents PDF Author: Stephen H. Haber
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019757615X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
An examination of how the patent system works, imperfections and all, to incentivize innovation Do patents facilitate or frustrate innovation? Lawyers, economists, and politicians who have staked out strong positions in this debate often attempt to validate their claims by invoking the historical record--but they frequently get the history wrong. The Battle over Patents gets it right. Bringing together thoroughly researched essays from prominent historians and social scientists, this volume traces the long and contentious history of patents and examines how they have worked in practice. Editors Stephen H. Haber and Naomi R. Lamoreaux show that patent systems are the result of contending interests at different points in production chains battling over economic surplus. The larger the potential surplus, the more extreme are the efforts of contending parties-now and in the past-to search out, generate, and exploit any and all sources of friction. Patent systems, as human creations, are therefore necessarily ridden with imperfections. This volume explores these shortcomings and explains why, despite all the debate, historically US-style patent systems still dominate all other methods of encouraging inventive activity.

The Life and Death of Democracy

The Life and Death of Democracy PDF Author: John Keane
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1847377602
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 717

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Book Description
John Keane's The Life and Death of Democracy will inspire and shock its readers. Presenting the first grand history of democracy for well over a century, it poses along the way some tough and timely questions: can we really be sure that democracy had its origins in ancient Greece? How did democratic ideals and institutions come to have the shape they do today? Given all the recent fanfare about democracy promotion, why are many people now gripped by the feeling that a bad moon is rising over all the world's democracies? Do they indeed have a future? Or is perhaps democracy fated to melt away, along with our polar ice caps? The work of one of Britain's leading political writers, this is no mere antiquarian history. Stylishly written, this superb book confronts its readers with an entirely fresh and irreverent look at the past, present and future of democracy. It unearths the beginnings of such precious institutions and ideals as government by public assembly, votes for women, the secret ballot, trial by jury and press freedom. It tracks the changing, hotly disputed meanings of democracy and describes quite a few of the extraordinary characters, many of them long forgotten, who dedicated their lives to building or defending democracy. And it explains why democracy is still potentially the best form of government on earth -- and why democracies everywhere are sleepwalking their way into deep trouble.

The Origins of Democratic Thinking

The Origins of Democratic Thinking PDF Author: Cynthia Farrar
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN: 9780521375849
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Dr Farrar argues that the development of political theory accompanied the growth of democracy at Athens in the fifth century BC. By analysing the writings of Protagoras, Thucydides and Democritus in the context of political developments and speculation about the universe, she reveals the existence of a distinctive approach to the characterisation of democratic order, and in doing so demonstrates the virtues of Thucydides' historical conception of politics.

Inventing Ideas

Inventing Ideas PDF Author: B. Zorina Khan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019093610X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
What determines why some countries succeed and others fall behind? Economists have long debated the sources of economic growth, resulting in conflicting and often inaccurate claims about the role of the state, knowledge, patented ideas, monopolies, grand innovation prizes, and the nature of disruptive technologies. B. Zorina Khan's Inventing Ideas overturns conventional thinking and meticulously demonstrates how and why the mechanism design of institutions propels advances in the knowledge economy and ultimately shapes the fate of nations. Drawing on the experiences of over 100,000 inventors and innovations from Britain, France, and the United States during the first and second industrial revolutions (1750-1930), Khan's comprehensive empirical analysis provides a definitive micro-foundation for endogenous macroeconomic growth models. This groundbreaking study uses comparative analysis across time and place to show how different institutions affect technological innovation and growth. Khan demonstrates how top-down innovation systems, in which elites, state administrators, or panels make key economic decisions about prizes, rewards and the allocation of resources, prove to be ineffective and unproductive. By contrast, open-access markets in patented ideas increase the scale and scope of creativity, foster diversity and inclusiveness, generate greater knowledge spillovers, and enhance social welfare in the wider population. When institutions are associated with rewards that are misaligned with economic value and productivity, the negative consequences can accumulate and reduce comparative advantage at the level of individuals and nations alike. So who will arise as the global leader of the twenty-first century? The answer depends on the extent to which we learn and implement the lessons from the history of innovation and enterprise.