Book Review: Jason Potts Innovation Commons: The Origin of Economic Growth , Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN:
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Book Review: Jason Potts Innovation Commons: The Origin of Economic Growth, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 9780190937508 Erwin Dekker1 Received: 31 March 2020 / Accepted: 7 September 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Jason Potts has often made contributions to cultural economics from an evolutionary perspective, with a keen eye for the social nature of production and consumption in the cultural sector. His new book combines these two perspectives; it argues for the social and evolutionary nature of the innovation process. His story is not about entrepreneurs, but rather about groups of enthusiasts who pool their knowledge and resources in what he calls ‘innovation commons,’ which he defines as ‘systems of rules for cooperation to facilitate pooling of information in order to maximize the likelihood of opportunity discovery’ (p. 1). One would therefore expect that he would have lots to say about the creative industries. Strangely enough, Potts ignores the creative industries throughout the book. Instead, he emphasizes the importance of technological innovation, but I will argue here that his theory has great potential for cultural economists. The first five chapters of the book lay out the theory of the innovation commons. Potts argues that innovation is a process of radical uncertainty, which neither firms nor individual (Schumpeterian) entrepreneurs are able to overcome. The problem faced by potential entrepreneurs is that of dispersed knowledge: They might have some piece of the puzzle, but miss others, and they lack an overview of the puzzle as a whole. Therefore, they must interact with others who similarly hold only one or a few pieces of the complex puzzle, and through this interaction, they might develop a sense of the whole problem. The economic problem is why such sharing and pooling between different economic actors would take place. Potts argues that to overcome the economic coordination problem, the innovation commons emerge, a temporary institutional solution, ordered by rules about cooperation, openness and sharing. His study of the commons as institutional structure is deeply inspired by Elinor Ostrom and takes up the middle of the book. The final chapters of the book draw out the implications for policy-makers who seek to jump start innovations. They are mostly a warning that many such attempts will focus too heavily on later * Erwin Dekker [email protected] 1
Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands
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Journal of Cultural Economics
phases of the innovation trajectory, neglecting the crucial first stage. He suggests that a better approach to innovation policy would be to facilitate collective learning and minimize opportunities for rent-seeking. Potts’ archetypical model of the innovation commons is the Homebrew Computer Club. This club, which emerged in the mid-1970s in Menlo Park (CA), consisted of hobbyists and computer amateurs and formed the basis of the later industrial cluster now known as Silic
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