My guest today is Eric von Hippel, Professor of Technological Innovation at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Eric is the author of numerous academic articles and books, including Free Innovation, Democratizing Innovation, and The Sources of Innovation, all published by MIT Press and available for free. Eric has accumulated over 90,000 citations on Google Scholar and has received many awards, including the Schumpeter School Prize (2017)—a particularly interesting recognition given his work on non-Schumpeterian innovation.

In our conversation, Eric and I explore the role of free innovation in today’s economy. Eric highlights some of his favorite examples of free innovation and discusses how, despite being developed at personal cost, it is scaling at an impressive rate. We explore the mechanisms that best enable this scaling—whether through recognition, institutional support, IP protections, or alternative incentives. By the end of this talk, you will understand what free innovation is, how it develops, and how it interacts with producer innovation.

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References:

Sources of Innovation (1988) https://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www-old/books/sources/SofI.pdf

Democratizing Innovation (2005) https://direct.mit.edu/books/book-pdf/2425023/book_9780262285636.pdf