Novartis is the latest pharmaceutical company to throw some wikinomics at its approach to research and development. After investing millions of dollars trying to unlock the genetic basis of type 2 diabetes, the company released all of its raw data on the Internet, for free.
To some, this will sound peculiar. After all, type 2 diabetes […]

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One of the great things about the new business environment is that we’re starting to see a lot of experimentation with different models for organizing creative/commercial endeavors that rest on various degrees of openness, peering, and sharing. The really interesting models are the hybrid ones where project/business leaders manage to blend mass collaboration with a […]

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Guardian columnist Victor Keegan recently joined a growing chorus of forward-thinking people in calling for lawmakers to roll-back or at least counter-balance the ever-tightening regime of copyright law. Keegan laments the efforts of entrenched Hollywood interests to further extend the lifespan of copyright protection and calls for lawmakers to tip the balance of copyright law […]

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Sun Microsystems announced today that the its opening up the source code for its popular Java software platform. With Java powering some 3.8 billion cell phones, supercomputers, medical devices, and other gadgets, the announcement represents one of the largest additions of computer code to the open-source community and marks a significant shift for a company […]

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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, […]

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Sony recently announced a partnership with the folding@home project that will allow scientists to harness the spare processing power of millions of Sony PlayStation 3 users. All of that processor power, in turn, will be used to better understand the causes of diseases like Alzheimer’s, cystic fibrosis, and cancer.

Sony’s new processor and graphics technology reportedly […]

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In our forthcoming book, Wikinomics (Portfolio 2006) Don Tapscott and I describe how a growing number of forward-thinking companies are blowing open their laboratory doors and inviting partners and competitors alike to share the risks and rewards of developing deep, long-term innovations in their industries. We argued that collaboration makes sense in a world where […]

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