Climate change policy has been in the news a lot recently with the United Kingdom set to release its report on the economic costs of climate change today. I’ve had a chance to read the highlights and find myself increasingly convinced that we have reached a tipping point in a decades-long campaign for a more environmentally-sustainable economy. I’ve long felt that we need to reinvent the economy around a set of policies, practices, technologies, and [...]

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The Guardian has published a good report on Google’s foray into political lobbying and its growing web of high-level connections. Like most other companies of its size and maturity, Google has established a political action commitee (PAC) and hired an army of well-connected communications and public relations officials to help protect/promote its business interests. It’s neither surprising nor entirely dubious that Google is ramping up its political influence machine–failing to do so would only cede [...]

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In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Google CEO Eric Schmidt lambasted government leaders around the world for being slow to understand and embrace the potential of new communications technologies. While companies in the private sector, many non-profit organizations, and an increasingly large proportion of the global citizenry steam ahead, government institutions are being left behind. As a prime example, the UK’s deputy prime minister John Prescott recently proclaimed, with some measure of smugness, [...]

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Conventional business wisdom says you should control and protect proprietary resources and innovations–especially intellectual property–through patents, copyright, and trademarks. If someone infringes your IP, get the lawyers out to do battle. Although many industries still think this way (witness the recording industry), my research reveals that a new economics of intellectual property is prevailing. Increasingly, and to a degree paradoxically, firms in electronics, biotechnology, software, and other fields find that maintaining and defending a proprietary [...]

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