Free Revealing

Eric A. Von Hippel and George Von Krogh have isolated a new trend. They call it "free revealing" and abstract the argument of their paper this way:

Central tenant of open innovation is free revealing of the detailed workings of novel products and services, so that others may use them, learn from them, and perhaps improve them as well. We explain that innovators frequently do freely reveal proprietary information and knowledge regarding both information-based products and physical products they have developed. We explain why free revealing can make good economic sense for innovators and for society as well. The article develops the case for free revealing in terms of a private collective model of innovation incentives. [See von Hippel, Eric A. and von Krogh, Georg, "Free Revealing and the Private-Collective Model for Innovation Incentives" . R&D Management, Vol. 36, No. 3, pp. 295-306, June 2006 Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=904435 or DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9310.2006.00435.x.]

To read more about it, you can go to von Hippel's worthwhile book, Democratizing Innovation (London: MIT Press, 2006), pp. 77-91. By traditional standards, it appears mystifying that someone would tell you everything about what they're doing, but this is more and more what's happening. More and more, patent-protection is becoming both less relevant and more anti-innovation. von Hippel explains why.

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