Economic Perspectives on Innovation and Invention Book

Bleah. Boring. Uninspiring. Nothing at all like his other book, Democratizing Innovation.


Quotes:

"It appears to me that innovating users of pultrusion process equipment are better able than innovating manufacturers to establish temporary monopoly control over their innovations. The key source of this difference is the ability of equipment users to hide their innovations for a period of time as trade secrets. This option is not open to manufacturer, who must display their innovations to customers in order to sell them."

"In effect, therefore, both users and manufacturers in this industry are both in a position to control the rights to an innovative engineering plastic that they may develop. But only a manufacturer (or a user who becomes a manufacturer) is in a position to exploit the significant economies of scale associated with engineering plastics manufacture. Given that this is so, a manufacturer that innovates is the only functional type of firm that does not have to incur the cost and risk of licensing this type of innovation to a manufacturer. The consequent saving in licensing-related cost and risk results in a higher expectation of net innovation-related rent for an innovating manufacturer than that which an innovating user might expect."