[off-topic] Re: [xml-dev] Managing Innovation

[Rick Jelliffe <ricko@allette.com.au>]

Charles Schaar wrote:
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> Innovation
is governed by revenue

This is reductionist enough to have some truth; excessive concentration of revenue stifles innovation.  I think
of my poor friends  slaving away in research labs of large corporations, with very little chance that
the ideas they develop will see the light of day unless they happen correspond to the one or two
strategic directions a company can have at any single time.

Revenue is determined by market share etc, and market share internationally is biased by bullying,
lead by various governements under the veil of intellectual property and market access. 
(What was the justification for the threatened Super 301 on Tron, for example?)

However, if you take many kinds of important innovations, commercial gain plays no part:
the three main drugs in the AIDS cocktail were developed by public money, for example* (making
the commercial exploitation of them even more obscene.)  

I cannot find the URL, but an interesting recent review of the great exhibitions (London and Paris) from
the late 1800s suggests that smaller countries get no overall benefit from patents, historically, IIRC.


Cheers
Rick Jelliffe

* One was developed for another purpose with public money, but applied to AIDS by a commercial co.