Intellectual Property Rights and Innovation: Evidence from the Human Genome

Williams, Heidi

doi:10.1086/669706

Cited by 314 publications

(179 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…However, from our point of view, recombination and incremental improvements are critical to innovation and patents can also stifle these processes by inhibiting the flow of information across individual minds, instead incentivizing secrecy. Consistent with this, historical analyses of patent laws by Moser [97] and recent analyses of human gene patents by Williams [98] both suggest that patent laws may often be too strong, reducing innovation, but this does not mean no patents would lead to more innovation. Based on data on pharmaceutical patents in 92 countries from 1978 to 1992, Qian [99] argues that there may be an optimal level of protection, after which innovation is stifled.…”

Section: (A) Increasing Innovation Ratesmentioning

confidence: 94%

Innovation in the collective brain

Muthukrishna

Henrich

2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

240

265

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One contribution of 15 to a theme issue 'Innovation in animals and humans: understanding the origins and development of novel and creative behaviour'. Innovation is often assumed to be the work of a talented few, whose products are passed on to the masses. Here, we argue that innovations are instead an emergent property of our species' cultural learning abilities, applied within our societies and social networks. Our societies and social networks act as collective brains. We outline how many human brains, which evolved primarily for the acquisition of culture, together beget a collective brain. Within these collective brains, the three main sources of innovation are serendipity, recombination and incremental improvement. We argue that rates of innovation are heavily influenced by (i) sociality, (ii) transmission fidelity, and (iii) cultural variance. We discuss some of the forces that affect these factors. These factors can also shape each other. For example, we provide preliminary evidence that transmission efficiency is affected by sociality-languages with more speakers are more efficient. We argue that collective brains can make each of their constituent cultural brains more innovative. This perspective sheds light on traits, such as IQ, that have been implicated in innovation. A collective brain perspective can help us understand otherwise puzzling findings in the IQ literature, including group differences, heritability differences and the dramatic increase in IQ test scores over time.

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Section: (A) Increasing Innovation Ratesmentioning

confidence: 94%

Innovation in the collective brain

Muthukrishna

Henrich

2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

240

265

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“…Our research also relates to (and was inspired) the observation that research, innovation, and technical advance tend to advance in an incremental fashion within defined paradigms, knowledge trajectories, research pathways, or dominant designs-some basic approach to solving the problem-that is then incrementally refined through a continuous series of cumulative, incremental advances (e.g., Kuhn 1962, Dosi 1982, Sahal 1985, Romer 1990, Gibbons et al 1994, Murray and O'Mahony 2007, Furman and Stern 2011, Williams 2013, Boudreau and Lakhani 2015. This overriding tendency toward within-paradigm, incremental advance rather than more novel and exploratory innovations might be explained by any number of mechanisms, such as the strategic incentives and organization of innovators (e.g., Kuhn 1962, Utterback and Abernathy 1975, March 1991, Manso 2011.…”

Section: Contributions and Relationships To Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Looking Across and Looking Beyond the Knowledge Frontier: Intellectual Distance and Resource Allocation in Science

et al. 2014

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Please scroll down for article-it is on subsequent pagesWith 12,500 members from nearly 90 countries, INFORMS is the largest international association of operations research (O.R.) and analytics professionals and students. INFORMS provides unique networking and learning opportunities for individual professionals, and organizations of all types and sizes, to better understand and use O.R. and analytics tools and methods to transform strategic visions and achieve better outcomes. For more information on INFORMS, its publications, membership, or meetings visit http://www.informs.org MANAGEMENT SCIENCES electing among alternative projects is a core management task in all innovating organizations. In this paper, we focus on the evaluation of frontier scientific research projects. We argue that the "intellectual distance" between the knowledge embodied in research proposals and an evaluator's own expertise systematically relates to the evaluations given. To estimate relationships, we designed and executed a grant proposal process at a leading research university in which we randomized the assignment of evaluators and proposals to generate 2,130 evaluator-proposal pairs. We find that evaluators systematically give lower scores to research proposals that are closer to their own areas of expertise and to those that are highly novel. The patterns are consistent with biases associated with boundedly rational evaluation of new ideas. The patterns are inconsistent with intellectual distance simply contributing "noise" or being associated with private interests of evaluators. We discuss implications for policy, managerial intervention, and allocation of resources in the ongoing accumulation of scientific knowledge.

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“…There is an extensive literature that examines the impact of regulatory institutions on innovation. Institutions may affect a country's innovation capacity (Furman, Porter, & Stern, 2002), utilize existing research and increase cumulative knowledge (Furman & Stern, 2011; Williams, 2013), affect license timing and facilitate technological trade (Gans, Hsu, & Stern, 2008), flow of knowledge transfer (Murray & Stern, 2007) and follow‐on innovation (Sampat & Williams, 2019). In this article, we focus on the role of institutions in how organizations utilize an existing innovation across different markets.…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Institutional entry barriers and spatial technology diffusion: Evidence from the broadband industry

Skiti

2020

Strategic Management Journal

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Research Summary: In this article, we examine the effects of institutional entry barriers on incumbent firms' technological diffusion. In particular, we combine new institutional economics and nonmarket perspectives to build a theoretical framework about the impact of local entry barriers on community-based firms and how they affect incumbent firms' technology diffusion. We theorize that the local institutional environment reduces technology diffusion because of reduced entry threat, but incumbents' capabilities and the intensity of competition from private firms may moderate this effect. We exploit the exogenous geographical variation of alternative entry regimes in the U.S. broadband industry to causally capture incumbents' technology adoption strategies. This article suggests that local institutional contexts that advantage private firms over nonprivate firms may generate divergent spatial technology diffusion processes within and across firms. Managerial Summary: In this article, we examine how firms adjust their technology adoption to their local institutional environment. We argue and empirically show that local institutions that restrict new entry by nonprivate firms reduce private incumbents' technology diffusion but the effect depends on firm and market characteristics. In particular, national incumbents are more resilient because of their capabilities

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Intellectual Property Rights and Innovation: Evidence from the Human Genome

Cited by 314 publications

References 40 publications

Innovation in the collective brain

Innovation in the collective brain

Looking Across and Looking Beyond the Knowledge Frontier: Intellectual Distance and Resource Allocation in Science

Institutional entry barriers and spatial technology diffusion: Evidence from the broadband industry

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