

In a Highly Complex World, Innovation From the Top Down - pg
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/business/yourmoney/29ping.html?ex=1343361600&en=59209d9c55f8aef6&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

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jmpeters
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.

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ivankirigin
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

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

