Martin Börjesson writes about patents and a possible future where "innovation is a commodity". Interesting thoughts! However, I disagree with the fact that innovation itself would become a commodity, in that scenario; rather, the means of realizing the innovation could perhaps become a commodity. Innovation itself becoming a commodity hopefully lies in a very, very distant future.
I’d like to speculate somewhat on this, however. The "realization of innovations" becoming a commodity would actually mean that we’ve established a new level from which innovations could take place. So there would always be another level of innovations whose realizations wouldn’t be a commodity, unless we believe that innovation stops somewhere. I believe it doesn’t.
Filed under: Future
I agree but (see also my own blog entry on this post for another comment – http://www.futuramb.se/blog/2005-10/patents-in-the-future/ ) but one point could still be that innovation – the way we conceive it today – will be a commodity. I agree also that our form of innovation could be called something else in the future and the real innovation then could refer to something at a more sophisticated level of new thinking/conceptualization or whatever.
If with innovation we mean something like adding a new a interesting function to a mobile phone, develop a new model or sell mobile phones in a unique way everybody will have that opportunity to do that in the future. This is the use of innovation that is popular today.
If we by innovation really mean new and unique thinking I agree that it never will be commodity since it is implicit in that interpretation of the conpect innovation.
Right, I agree. The key is of course “the way we conceive it today”. And innovation, in that sense, will certainly become a commodity (and then perhaps even exhausted).