Are You Open?. An Investigation of the Concept of Openness for Knowledge and Innovation

Julien Pénin ()

Revue économique, 2013, vol. 64, issue 1, 133-148

Abstract: This paper investigates the meaning and the importance of the concept of openness for knowledge and innovation. We propose two definitions of openness for a piece of knowledge, a weak one and a strong one. The common point between the two is that they both emphasize the centrality of the conditions of access: a piece of knowledge is open if it is made available to all under conditions that are non-discriminatory and reasonable. Our definition thus stresses the difference between openness and gratuity: a piece of knowledge can be open even though it is not free of charge. Then, we show that this definition of openness enables us to distinguish open innovation à la Chesbrough [2003], which does not fit it, from collective invention (Allen [1983]; Nuvolari, [2004]) and more generally open source models of knowledge production, which do. We conclude with the implications of this work for innovation practitioners and policy makers.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cairn.info/load_pdf.php?ID_ARTICLE=RECO_641_0133 (application/pdf)
http://www.cairn.info/revue-economique-2013-1-page-133.htm (text/html)
free

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cai:recosp:reco_641_0133

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Revue économique from Presses de Sciences-Po
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jean-Baptiste de Vathaire ().