Abstract

Currently, two modelsof innovation are prevalent in organization science. The "private investment" model assumes returns to the innovator resultfsu private goods andef ficient regimesof intellectual property protection. The "collective action" model assumes that under conditionsof market f ailure, innovators collaborate in order to produce a public good. The phenomenonof open sourcesofc are development shows that users program to solve their own as well as shared technical problems, andfd./( reveal their innovations without appropriating private returnsftu selling thesofL are. In this paper, we propose that open sourcesofc are development is an exemplarof a compound "private-collective" modelof innovation that contains elementsof both the private investment and the collective action models and canof f society the "bestof both worlds" under many conditions. We describe a new setof research questions this model raisesfi scholars in organization science.

Citations