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Reader Commentary

关于: “OPEN STANDARDS, OPEN SOURCE, AND OPEN INNOVATION,”
BY ELLIOT MAXWELL

At many conferences I have mumbled privately that the word “open” should be
banned. Everyone agrees that “open” is good, but agreement ends there. 不同的
speakers use the word for different purposes, referring to different processes or
结果. While it would be Draconian to ban the word, it would force speakers
to be clear about what they mean.

当然, banning a single word would not be very practical. 幸运的是, 这
next best thing is: defining terms carefully and employing their meaning in a con-
sistent manner. That is what Elliot Maxwell does.

Elliot Maxwell distinguishes between various meanings of open: making deci-
sions transparent; making outcomes accessible to others; making a process wel-
coming to input from a wide set of decision makers; and making a process capa-
ble of debating distinct points of view. It would be excessively blithe and inaccu-
rate to say that he is in favor of them all. 相当, he finds merits in transparency
and accessibility, because they nurture accountability in processes that welcome
diverse viewpoints. In many contexts—both business and government decision
making—that leads to more innovative outcomes.

Maxwell also recognizes that some types of transparency are not a slam dunk
all the time: transparency can clash with other values, such as privacy and securi-
蒂. 毕竟, nobody wants the records from their latest medical exam to end up on
the Internet without their permission, but if a doctor makes an incompetent deci-
sion we also want the doctor to be accountable.

Finding the right balance has become more challenging in recent times. 两个
Maxwell’s arguments resonated with me. 一方面, most of the time, 一个
incremental movement towards more transparency and accountability results in
an improvement. That is true in many parts of the developed world, 包括
我们。, as well as in the developing world. 第二, we are entering an era when know-
how in our society accumulates more easily and spreads more quickly than in the
过去的. Most of us recognize this in its pieces: when we send email; when we read
维基百科; when we find lost writing with Google; when we contribute to an open
source project like Linux; when we read on-line journals. The act of acquiring,
accumulating and generating knowledge is changing. That change demands a
rethinking of core principles.

Clear language has a clear benefit: it identifies the hard problems. Maxwell’s

paper bring two such problems to the fore:

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第一的, if we agree on the direction of movement, how do we get from here to
那里, even incrementally? It is not easy to operate processes in the way that
Maxwell advocates. Accountability from transparent information has a benefit, 但
it also has costs that self-interested participants in society can and will seek to
避免. The details of such choices do not always lead to easy decisions about how
to balance competing values. Why would a big private firm want its decisions to be
transparent to others if they gain strategic advantages from cagey secrecy? 为什么
would the stock-holders for a marketing company holding lists of names, 地址-
英语, and social security numbers want their firm to be held liable for a clerical error?
Why would a big firm devote its valuable human resources to a national standard-
ization effort, if it can just live off the efforts of others who do the coordinating in
standards committees?

第二, there are unanticipated consequences from the movement towards
more accessible information. It makes it possible for different facets of society to
broadcast their behavior in new ways. As a parent, teacher, and participating mem-
ber of civil society I find myself struggling to come to terms with the unwanted
sides of these changes. 例如, it is becoming tremendously distracting to
watch vanity behavior increase—from teenagers, musicians, athletes, 和自己-
aware politicians, not just porn stars. Most of us want the Internet to lead to a gro-
cery with better produce, dairy, and meat sections, not a larger section devoted to
the National Inquirer and other eye-catching tabloids. 然而, what comes across
many of our computer screens every morning makes us confront what we happily
and much more easily avoided in the past.

Shane Greenstein
Elinor and Wendell Hobbs Professor of Management and Strategy
Kellogg School of Management
Northwestern University

关于: “THE HONEY BEE NETWORK” BY ANIL K. GUPTA

Biodiversity faces historically unparalleled threats. Deforestation continues apace;
fresh water sources are increasingly polluted; coral reefs are imperiled. The human
footprint on planet earth expands in a way which seems to threaten almost every-
事物, everywhere.

同时, biotechnology is finding evermore applications for natural
产品, semi-synthetic derivatives, and even synthetics based on, or inspired by,
natural products. New technologies are being developed daily that can find, 他-
lyze, and manipulate molecules in ways once unimaginable. As a consequence,
biotech has increased not only the present utility, but also the potential future util-
性, of species in all of their diversity.

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How ironic, 然后, that we should be destroying something as it becomes ever-
more useful: new treatments for “incurable” diseases, new fibers for industry, 新的
biodegradable pesticides, and maybe even new sources of energy that are literally
going up in smoke.

Further complicating the ability to harness Mother Nature’s genius is the issue
of Intellectual Property Rights (also known by the acronym “IPR”), 哪个地址-
es the key issues of who owns species and/or the knowledge of how best to use
他们. The history of the interaction between cultures—primarily western and
indigenous cultures—has not been a mutually beneficial one. Indigenous peoples
generally have received little or nothing in return for their familiarity with local
flora and fauna, and their knowledge of how such natural resources can be used to
the benefit of humans.

At a time when most discussions that surround IPR issues focus on the sorry
history of these interactions or the difficulty (or even impossibility) of successful
partnerships, Anil Gupta’s article detailing the many successes of the Honey Bee
Network in India comes as a distinct breath of fresh air. While not as well known
to the western NGO and donor community as the now famous Grameen Bank
which has so successfully developed the concept of microlending, the Honey Bee
Network has innovated an approach that has potential to be at least as successful
in helping poor and marginalized people help themselves. Their techniques have
the advantage of being elegant, 直截了当, and empowering the local part-
ners to lead their own initiatives. Notably successful efforts to date have included
bringing together representatives of rural communities to exchange organic farm-
ing techniques; organizing biodiversity contests in which children compete to
show off their knowledge of local medicinal plants; organizing competitions
among women where the challenge is to cook the most nutritious meal possible
with available resources; and many other clever initiatives. Gupta delineates his
concept of the “long tail for inventions” in which Honey Bee Network actually
helps local inventors develop patent protection, including products as diverse as a
motorcycle based tractor, and a novel type of cart used by local farmers which
actually received patent protection from the U.S. Patent Office!

Many of the ideas developed by the Honey Bee Network seem directly applica-
ble to IPR issues in countries other than India. Some of their approaches should
be adaptable directly, others may prove applicable after certain modifications,
while still others will inspire completely novel ideas. Gupta’s article—concise,
clearly-written and chock full of successful examples—should prove highly effec-
tive at helping spread the word about this powerful Indian initiative.

Mark Plotkin
总统
The Amazon Conservation Team

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关于: “THE ENERGY INNOVATION IMPERATIVE,” BY JOHN P. HOLDREN

I strongly agree with, and share, John Holdren’s intuition that accelerating the
incentive for innovation is the most powerful and also politically feasible strategic
avenue open [for addressing energy challenges].

That there is little investment in public research may not be altogether such a
bad thing. The data I have seen about the efficacy of government research in either
the environment or the energy area is quite discouraging—and not in the least bit
surprising given the incentive structure prevailing in government laboratories.

You mentioned the leverage of emissions trading in a final sentence of your
discussion of innovation. When we were working to create this system in the
Carter years and before, in fact it was precisely this end that was my chief motiva-
tion and argument. If one can get every plant manager and engineer to have a pow-
erful interest in innovation and in pollution abatement—especially in those ele-
ments where results are relatively low cost—one has achieved the best possible
结果. Once emissions trading is going full blast, every plant manager will have the
same incentive (profit maximization) to innovate for the public environmental
good as she or he does to increase the production of goods. (A July-August 1981
Harvard Business Review article I authored, titled “Thinking Ahead: Getting
Smarter about Regulations,” outlines what we had then built. As you’ll see if you
review the article, the basics today are what they were then!)

相比之下, the existing system gives managers a powerful incentive not to
innovate lest that innovation becomes the new “best available technology.”
Equipment manufacturers, 最为显着地, sell to customers who very definitely do
not want them innovating to raise the bar.

Strong incentives to reduce emissions help energy conservation; 但, 我相信,

we need incentive tools that are aimed directly at energy as well.

在这方面, I would draw to Holdren’s attention a working paper [titled “Job
Creation Tax Options”] that Get America Working [an organization of which I am
the founder and chair] published several years ago. It outlines 20 natural resource
taxes to demonstrate how easy it would be entirely to replace the country’s enor-
mously destructive payroll taxes. The energy inefficiency tax, 尤其, is polit-
ically low cost and would give managers a most powerful incentive continuously to
seek out new energy technology “S-curves.”

Bill Drayton
Founder & CEO, Ashoka: Innovators for the Public
Founder & Chair, Get America Working

Editors’ note: Drayton was Assistant Administrator at the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency from 1977-1981, during which time he led the implementation of
the first emissions trading system and the introduction of other mechanisms to sharp-
en incentives to comply with environmental regulations. Drayton and Holdren are
both members of the advisory board of Innovations.

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