Reviews for The Microdynamics of Technological Change

The average rating for The Microdynamics of Technological Change based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-01-10 00:00:00 Ken Draus (Full Disclosure: One of the authors of this book was a professor of mine recently. Nevertheless, I have endeavored to keep this review as fair and balanced as possible.) As the internet, social media, and smart phones continue to rapidly change the way we do business with and interact with the rest of the world, it can be difficult for governments, academics, and tech experts to set up rules of governance to make the playing field as level as possible or predict where the next political issue from the Web will arise. This book endeavors to apply some general norms to the understanding how governments both nationally and internationally can create rules for internet governance that promote innovation while being fair to all constituents. I wish I could say that this book would be of use to anyone interested in this complicated topic, but frankly it is not. While there are key insights in this book about how changes in the global market for internet and software services have shaped the choices available to policy makers, they are so buried underneath the technical jargon of the industry that not even a good dictionary would help you out. Admittedly, this book would only appeal to a key audience, that is tech experts and policy wonks steeped in this topic, but it holds no value for the layman who may be interested understanding the topic. Furthermore, this book was first published in 2009 and, so far as I can tell, has not been updated. Thus, some of the questions it raises and topics it discusses can be a little dated. For example, a big portion of the last couple of chapters dealt with assignment of data spectrum for 3G networks. Considering that nearly all smartphones are now firmly in the 4G camp or beyond, the discussion is clearly superfluous. In short, if you are not a tech expert or tech policy wonk, don't waste your time with this book.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-10-15 00:00:00 Andreas Ruckes 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."