New articles on Yochai Benkler and Peer Production

(1) Times Online: "Mind maps for those who prefer a picture"
Yochai Benkler, a professor of law at Yale, whose new book, The Wealth of Networks, is a monumental contribution to our thinking about the future (www.benkler.org).
It is not an easy book. It is not a short book. But it is profoundly important. Premised on fundamental changes in the way in which information is created and shared in society, Benkler’s research and arguments anticipate a networked information economy that is increasingly underpinned by peer production and non-market collaboration, and a society in which we should be able to reshape our principles of state, justice, freedom and law.

(2) Benkler's WIKI:
his Wiki is an invitation to collaborate on building a learning and research environment based on Yochai Benkler's book, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom.

(3) OpenBusiness interview with Yochai Benkler.

(4) Book review (German Law Journal): Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (2006)

New Article: "Thriving in the New Innovation Landscape"

Business Week Article: Thriving in the New Innovation Landscape
Open innovation advocate Henry Chesbrough tells how companies can successfully rethink their business models

Two interesting Blogs on Peer Production

• P2P Foundation
• Open Innovation

Some articles on InnoCentive

Chemical & Engineering News: A publication of the American Chemical Society: InnoCentive Opens Research Doors

Der Spiegel: Using the Internet to Solve R&D Problems
"In the past, R&D departments worked more or less on their own, while today the so-called Open Innovation concept is becoming increasingly widespread," says Frank Piller, a researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston who has set up a team of scientists dedicated exclusively to this issue. Companies are thus able to cost- effectively "outsource" highly specialized tasks to a large pool of inventors around the world when they lack the in-house expertise." "Innocentive's site, which is essentially a marketplace for inventors, has expanded considerably since pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly started it in 2001. Now even some of Lilly's competitors use the site, including BASF, Novartis, Nestlé and Procter & Gamble, which has increased the share of product ideas accepted from outside inventors from 20 to 35 percent over the last three years."

Harvard Business Review: Connect and Develop: Inside Procter and Gamble's New Model for Innovation

BusinessWeek: Businesses Must Learn to let Go

WIRED Article: "The Rise of Crowdsourcing"

"Remember outsourcing? Sending jobs to India and China is so 2003. The new pool of cheap labor: everyday people using their spare cycles to create content, solve problems, even do corporate R & D." [>>]

"Five Rules of the New Labor Pool" [>>]

"Look Who's Crowdsourcing" [>>]

Some Links: Peer Production

A Time article ("100 People who shape our world") says Jimmy Wales "has led what may prove to be the most powerful industrial model of the 21st century: peer production. Wikipedia is proof that it works, and Jimmy Wales is its prophet." >>

The Australian ("Sting in the tail for market dinosaurs") cites Chirs Anderson:
"Our online strategy is to totally embrace blogs, peer production, user-generated content, wikis, voting, comments, trackbacks and video uploads," he says. "The old model was we had to do all the work, now maybe we can catalyse content creation on the part of our readers. If we play this right, this could be the best thing that ever happened to us. If we're wrong, we're competing with an army of people who are just getting better and better every day."

Threadless T-Shirts: An open company ...

Blog: "The Economics of Peer Production"

Short article on "Economics of Peer Production" [link].
Excerpt:

At the end, he asks: “The peer producers are their own consumers. They get a better product by tapping into the knowledge pool. And they get a product that exactly fits their needs because they help design it (often with minimal effort). How do you compete with that?” That is precisely the reason why this blog argues for empowering consumers (clients and customers): it yields better products and stimulates Word of Mouth advocacy. And – as we can see from this article – it can even help companies stay ahead of a peer production competition that they might have to face one day.

New book: 'Open Business Models'

In his landmark book Open Innovation, Henry Chesbrough demonstrated that because useful knowledge is no longer concentrated in a few large organizations, business leaders must adopt a new, "open" model of innovation. Using this model, companies look outside their boundaries for ideas and intellectual property (IP) they can bring in, as well as license their unutilized home-grown IP to other organizations. In Open Business Models, Chesbrough takes readers to the next step--explaining how to make money in an open innovation landscape. He provides a diagnostic instrument enabling you to assess your company's current business model and explains how to overcome common barriers to creating a more open model. He also offers compelling examples of companies that have developed such models--including Procter & Gamble, IBM, and Air Products. In addition, Chesbrough introduces a new set of players--"innovation intermediaries"--who facilitate companies' access to external technologies. He explores the impact of stronger IP protection on intermediate markets for innovation and profiles firms (such as Intellectual Ventures and Qualcomm) that center their business models on innovation and IP. This vital resource provides a much-needed road map to connect innovation with IP management, so companies can create and capture value from ideas and technologies wherever in the world they are found.

New book: 'Wikinomics'

Wikinomics is the title of a book currently in the works from Tapscott and Williams. They draw on five years of research into the peer-oriented model of collaboration and participation in the economy, highlighting its role in the way companies innovate and create value. This new participation - “peer production” - is changing how goods and services are invented, produced, marketed, and distributed on a global basis. It presents far-reaching opportunities for every company and for every person who gets connected.
Follow the link to contribute yourself by suggesting a subtitle for the book.
And here’s an excerpt - “In a world of WIKINOMICS, you can do much more than build your own business on Amazon. Produce your own videos on YouTube and share them with a worldwide audience; create a community around your photo collection on Flickr; or edit the astronomy entry on Wikipedia. You can plug into InnoCentive and join Procter and Gamble’s virtual R&D department; remix the Nine Inch Nails rock album; or co-design the interactive features for your next BMW. The new bottom line is that winning companies are open and porous. They compete by reaching outside their walls to harness external knowledge and resources. They engage and co-create products with many partners, across borders, cultures, disciplines, and organizational boundaries