In a Highly Complex World, Innovation From the Top Down

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/business/yourmoney/29ping.html?ex=1343361600&en=59209d9c55f8aef6&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

by pg • 19 years ago

8 3 19 years ago

nytimes.com

jmpeters• 19 years ago

The author is in search of generalizations where none exist. The closed nature of the Mac and the iPod says more about the personality of one individual -- Steve Jobs -- than it does about some larger trend. The statement that "new technologies are becoming so complex that many are beyond the possibility of democracy playing a role in their development" is belied by Linux and other large-scale open-source systems, which are every bit as complex and as impressive as anything produced by "corporate or government initiatives overseen by elites."

There are plenty of successful examples of both top-down and bottom-up approaches to innovation in the marketplace today. Innovation is alive and well, especially in the high tech world, and attempts to put the great diversity of innovation happening today into one of two tidy academic cubbyholes seems like a waste of time.

ivankirigin2• 19 years ago

Look to the openMoko for distributed innovation from a mobile device -- and the opening of the spectrum.

ivankirigin2• 19 years ago

There is a huge confusion in this article. It tries to equate distributed innovation ("democratized") with government mandated research into things like stem cells (also "democratized" in the literal sense of mandated by a democratic government).

That doesn't even make any sense, to confuse the two.

I have to agree with another comment about finding generalizations where there are none. Painting with a rather broad brush: all technologies are developed by elite teams top-down or distributed.

What about elite, distributed teams? Yah-know -- like the set of all startups :-P

In a Highly Complex World, Innovation From the Top Down

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