Big Innovation Research Articles

Regulating Innovation in the New Economy

The big digital innovation story of the last couple of years has been the rise of the sharing economy. In the sharing economy, individuals rent out resources they're not using, via a set of apps that allow people to connect with each other to engage in peer-to-peer transactions. It has been sold by its supporters (and by the startups powering it) as a social good--a way to help people access the value of underused resources (why shouldn't someone else be driving your car for the 22 hours a day you're not using it?), avoid waste (why buy a drill when your neighbor has one you can borrow, for a small fee?), and strengthen communities by returning to an earlier era, one in which the primary currency was reputation. (For two typically exuberant overviews of the sharing economy, see Wired's April 2014 cover article, "Trust Me," and the February 2013 Forbes article "Airbnb and the Unstoppable Rise of the Share Economy.") But the sharing economy has run into trouble in the last year, as its biggest names face legal and regulatory challenges. Airbnb, which allows users to rent short-term accommodations from private owners, fought legislators in New York and elsewhere, who argued that the service was essentially a hotel business that should be taxed and regulated as such. The ride-sharing app Uber was banned in several countries and faced sharp inquiries elsewhere, as drivers were accused of assault and worse and its surge-pricing algorithm produced outsized fares for short rides. Other sharing-economy apps ran into trouble for other reasons--several articles have explored the real difficulty of making even a poverty-level wage from TaskRabbit, for instance--but Uber and Airbnb are the vanguard of an evolution that is bringing a fundamental change in the nature of Internet innovation, a change that extends far beyond the sharing economy. These apps interact with the physical world in tangible ways, facilitating transactions that require one-on-one interactions. They are products of the increasing convergence of our physical and digital worlds, and the questions raised by these companies and their practices will only become more urgent as that convergence accelerates and spreads, catalyzed by the growing Internet of things, wearable electronics, and a host of other technologies. Much of the controversy stems from the fact that these new businesses have managed to operate outside established regulatory frameworks--without governmental permission. Vint Cerf has called this "permissionless innovation," and he sees the openness it represents as "the mainspring of the Internet's economic power. By giving anyone connected the ability to communicate with anyone else on the network, the Internet has decreased barriers to entry and democratised access to opportunities once reserved for a privileged few: opportunities to speak and be heard, but also opportunities to turn a good idea into a business, to compete for customers, or to help build a better tomorrow." Adam Thierer, who is widely quoted on the topic, defines permissionless innovation as "the notion that experimentation with new technologies and business models should generally be permitted by default. Unless a compelling case can be made that a new invention will bring serious harm to society, innovation should be allowed to continue unabated and problems, if they develop at all, can be addressed later." His original March 2014 blog post offers some nuance, presenting three options: permissionless innovation; permissioned innovation, which offers "general freedom to experiment and innovate, but with possibility that innovation may later be restricted in some fashion"; and the precautionary principle, under which innovations are "curtailed or disallowed until developers can prove they will not cause any harms." But his e-book Permissionless Innovation, which he describes as a development from the blog post, argues that there are two options: the precautionary principle or permissionless innovation--the intermediary third option is gone. …

Modern Monetary Policy and Central Bank Governance: A Story of Two Tales

The objective of this note is to present the evolution of both the economics and the political economy of monetary policy in the last three decades – first the Great Moderation and then the Financial Crisis – as a story of two intertwined tales: on the one side the tale of how to govern money and interest rates in the short run; on the other side the tale of how to design in a longer horizon the monetary architectures. In the tradition the two tales are told separately, where the academic scholars preferred to focus essentially on the first perspective while only the central bankers and partially the policymakers were also sensible to the engineering of the monetary settings. The big innovation in the modern monetary policy was the progressive merger of the analysis of the macroeconomic effects of the public choices in the monetary games played day by day (monetary policy) with the study of the structural features that characterized both the monetary players – governments and central bankers – as well as the rules and institutions of the monetary games that shape goals and incentives of the players (central bankers and other economic agents).

Material world [fashion-tech innovation

Every so often a fashion innovation comes along that fits so seamlessly into our lives that we can't imagine a time when it wasn't hanging in our wardrobes. Ready-made, off-the-shelf clothing came about due to innovation in textile manufacturing in the 1830s, the advent of plastic zips in the 1950s revolutionised the fashion industry, and Teflon began to coat uniforms in the 1960s to increase their wearability. Could nanomaterials be the next big fashion-tech innovation? `Fashion tech', a phrase bandied around far too often at sportswear launches, London Fashion Week and wearable device events, has faced widespread criticism by both industries. Beyond sewing LEDs onto dresses and integrating pedometers into bracelets, seemingly few industry experts can pinpoint how technology is going to influence fashion in the future. While thousands of websites are praising a new age of wearable devices and smart materials, Google the phrase `nanomaterials in fashion' and startlingly little has been researched or written. In a modern, tech-savvy age where the fashion and technology sectors are being heralded as industry's most promising new allies, it's a troubling disconnect. It's not an illusion that the fashion industry has been slow to embrace and foster the use of technology within its hallowed halls. In an arena that thrives on the individuality of designers and the protected secrets of original design, few fashion designers have opted to open the closely guarded doors of their fashion-houses to the troublesome influence of engineers and scientists.

The link between renal denervation and reduction of cardiovascular risks: Simplicity or not?

It has been demonstrated that abnormalities of the sympathetic nervous system strongly contribute to the development and/or maintenance of multiple disease states such as hypertension, heart failure, diabetes mellitus, sleep apnea, kidney disease and arrhythmias [1]. When we look through the window of hypertension, the renal nerves have been identified as important contributors in both development and maintenance of hypertension [2]. We read with great enthusiasm the article written by Ott and colleagues evaluating the effect of renal denervation (RDN) on elevated urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio (UACR) in patients with resistant hypertension [3]. They have subdivided the patients according to their UACR at baseline into micro(30–300 mg/g, n = 37) and macroalbuminuria (300–2200 mg/g, n = 22) and found a significant reduction in UACR in all patients (p b 0.001) and in both subgroups (p b 0.001). They have implicated that, following RDN, the magnitude of albuminuria as well as the prevalence of microand macroalbuminuria decreased in patients with treatment-resistant hypertension and concluded that, since albuminuria is an independent renal and cardiovascular risk factor, a reduction of renal and cardiovascular risk could be achieved by RDN in these patients. The effect of catheter-based RDN on resistant hypertension in humans was assessed clinically in 2009, by the first proof-of-principle multicenter study from 45 patients with treatment-resistant hypertension [4]. The initial cohort was subsequently expanded from 45 to 153 patients, and the follow-up durationwas increased to a minimum of 2 years (Symplicity HTN-1) [5]. Both studies reported promising results favoring RDN. As it was an unblinded prospective cohort study without a control group, it was soon followed by the Symplicity HTN-2 trial to further assess RDN in a randomized fashion [6]. The Symplicity HTN-2 included 106 patients with severe resistant hypertensionwhowere randomized to RDN and conventional medical therapy versus conventional medical therapy alone. RDN was found to bemore effective thanmedical therapy alone in reducing blood pressure (BP), causing a reduction of 32 mmHg in systolic and 12 mm Hg in diastolic BP in the RDN group and no significant change in the control group. However, no changes in renal function or UACRwere identified in either group. The studywasdesigned such that patients from the control group were allowed to crossover to RDN therapy after six months, provided that the BP remained uncontrolled with a systolic BP greater than 160mmHg. Interestingly, the crossover group consisting of 35 patients experienced a significant drop in BP similar to that observed in the initial RDN group at 6 months' follow-up [7]. Recently published long-term results of the Symplicity HTN-1 study also imply that the efficacy gradually increases in 3 years' follow-up [7]. There is also evidence that patients with milder forms of hypertension may benefit from RDN [8]. Furthermore, there is emerging evidence that RDN may have a role in the treatment of heart failure, obstructive sleep apnea, insulin resistance, atrial fibrillation, hypertension associatedwith end-stage renal disease and, as shown recently, even in patients with ventricular storm where sympathetic nervous system seems to have a crucial role [9–13]. Thus, given the fact that resistant hypertension and other diseases associated with elevated sympathetic tone have significant morbidity and mortality rates, RDN therapy might be expected to have a crucial role on public health. However, the results of the Symplicity-3 trial overturned this optimistic mood about the RDN [14]. In the Symplicity HTN-3 study, RDN had no significant effect on office or 24-hour ambulatory systolic BP, findings that contradict most published studies on RDN. A recent trial even suggested inferiority of RDN as compared to adjusted drug treatment [15]. There is now growing evidence of lack of BP response following RDN in up to 50% of cases in some reports [16,17]. Clinical use of RDN had significantly increased after the encouraging results of Symplicity HTN-1 trial [5]. Afterwards, clinical studies with encouraging results appeared in the literature [18–20]. Parallel to these developments, medical device companies fancied RDN as the next big innovation and as a blockbuster therapy for millions of patients with resistant hypertension. But, what exactly happened that suddenly reversed this optimistic mood? Actually, it seems like there is no significant change; only the puzzle pieces are beginning to fall into place. Possibly because of the methodological problems involved in the initial studies, exaggerated interpretations led to heightened expectations from this exciting new treatment modality. There are three crucial points which need to be discussed.

Time Lags Related to Past and Current IT Innovations in Japan

The aim of this study was to examine two types of time lag related to IT innovations in Japan. The first is the time lag between newspaper articles and academic papers in the past. The second is the ongoing time lag with regard to the big data trend between the United States and Japan. This article explores a new analytical process based on two-dimensional maps proposed by Krinder et al. (2005) for visualizing and measuring time lags. After overviewing the big data trend in Japan, the author analyzed 2,910 newspaper articles and 550 academic papers published in Japan related to past innovations, as well as 734 newspaper articles from the United States and 173 from Japan related to the big data innovation. The results indicate that academic research for past trends lags business trends by 1-4 years. However, time lags in the big data trend could not be captured because of the difficulty predicting the point of inflection of S-shaped curves in an early stage of innovation. Accordingly, the author simulated future S-shaped curves to show the gap between the United States and Japan.

A Kabuki Innovator, Nakamura Kanzaburō XVIII, Dies Too Young: Where Does Kabuki Go from Here?

A Kabuki Innovator, Nakamura Kanzaburō XVIII, Dies Too Young: Where Does Kabuki Go from Here? Laurence Kominz (bio) Kabuki actor, producer, and director Nakamura Kanzaburō XVIII passed away on 5 December 2012, at age fifty-seven, of acute respiratory failure following a half-year battle with throat cancer. Kanzaburō was not just another kabuki star, he was the soul of the art for a huge number of fans, and the hope for kabuki moving in new directions in the future. The “XVIII” indicates that he was the eighteenth-generation actor to bear this name, and his branch of the Nakamura family has owned theaters, managed companies, and directed plays since the early seventeenth century, as well as occasionally providing star actors for the stage. Our Kanzaburō was more, and did more, than all of the above. At the same time that he assiduously studied the work of his illustrious father and other actors of the preceding generation, Kanzaburō’s dedication to kabuki’s heritage as a commoners’ art and his sense that kabuki needed to move in new directions in order to thrive led him to make three big innovations that proved to be immensely successful, both commercially and critically. The foundation of Kanzaburō’s success was his charisma on stage. He was a master of every sort of role—he played intense samurai [End Page 267] avengers, lovesick shopkeepers, and women of every sort, including the horrific avenging ghost of a brutally murdered wife. Small in physical stature, he avoided playing stripe-faced martial superheroes (aragoto roles), but no one on the kabuki stage could rival Kanzaburō as a master of kabuki comedy. He brought his charisma and warm personality to these roles—every member of the audience felt that Kanzaburō was acting “just for me,” and this gave him a fan base greater than any other performer. While other leading actors feel most comfortable in fancy restaurants in the company of wealthy patrons and the artistic elite, Kanzaburō rubbed elbows with fans on the street, hung out with lowbrow television comedians, and avidly followed popular trends in music and contemporary theater. No kabuki actor had a truer compass bearing on what today’s Japanese audiences enjoy. And Kanzaburō came to the conclusion that it was, in fact, just what kabuki audiences enjoyed in the heyday of kabuki in the Edo period (1600–1868): action, personality, intense emotionality, slapstick and wit, and creative hybridization of past and present on stage. He knew that the time had come to break some tried-and-true rules of the kabuki stage, but he often stated that an actor had to first master traditional forms in order to know how, when, and why to break or change them. Kanzaburō (then using the name Kankurō) began to put his ideas to the test in 1994 with Cocoon Kabuki. Theater Cocoon was a new venue in the Shibuya neighborhood—hangout of teenagers and twenty-year-olds, a very different milieu than the National Theater across the moat from the Imperial Palace, and the Kabuki-za, in the posh Ginza district. In Tokyo location means a lot, and collaborating with avant-garde playwright and director Kushida Kazuyoshi, Kan zaburō incorporated elements of underground theater and used a more intimate theater space to create dynamism, excitement, and intimacy reminiscent of Edo period kabuki. The fight scenes in Cocoon plays were incredible—in one play a battle took place in a pond with real water covering the width of the stage, splashing spectators in the front rows; in another play Kanzaburō’s hero fought off an army during a blizzard, to the accompaniment of music by alternative rock musician Ringo Shiina. Kanzaburō’s inherited position of authority, his on-stage brilliance, his imagination as a producer-director, and the commercial success that followed allowed him to assemble a company of actors to support him in his artistic experiments. In 2000 Kanzaburō opened his famous Heisei Nakamura-za, a temporary, moveable tent theater, seating about nine hundred people, that partially recreates an intimate Edo period playhouse. While often situated in Asakusa, Tokyo’s lowbrow entertainment district, Kanzaburō [End Page 268] took his tent theater all over Japan, and even...

On Competition and the Strategic Management of Intellectual Property in Oligopoly

An innovative firm with private information about its indivisible process innovation chooses strategically whether to apply for a patent with probabilistic validity or rely on secrecy. By doing so, the firm manages its rivals’ beliefs about the size of the innovation, and affects the incentives in the product market. A Cournot competitor tends to patent big innovations, and keep small innovations secret, while a Bertrand competitor adopts the reverse strategy. Increasing the number of firms gives a greater (smaller) patenting incentive for Cournot (Bertrand) competitors. Increasing the degree of product substitutability increases the incentives to patent the innovation.

Collaborate to innovate?

Collaborate to innovate?

Editorial: Antibodies and other biopharmaceuticals

Biopharmaceuticals are not any longer in their infancy, since their uprise in the nineties they are grown ups now. The general public and even scientists working in biological disciplines may not realize that in the Western world at least 20% of pharma-ceuticals are already of biological origin. What was a big innovation 30 years ago [1] has become reality [2]. When questioning why we have already 20–30% of biopharmaceuticals a simple answer is: they are efficacious, potent and safe. Only one of all approved biopharmaceutical needed to be removed from the market and biopharmaceutical companies thrive on their patents [3]. Biopharmaceuticals meet the therapeutic needs. However, despite the clinical success of biopharmaceuticals, our society is facing a dilemma. Biopharmaceuticals may blow up the healthcare budget, as some of these drugs cost up to 35 000 US $ per therapy. So the social need to restrict health care expense is in conflict with the success of these new products. The contribution of biotechnology will be to optimize production systems and even create new processes. This will not happen instantaneously, since processes are in place and a safe replacement is slow and requests additional clinical trials. Therefore, we will observe an incremental change within the next years. Eventually for new products we may observe a radical change in production technologies, using unit operations which have been around since a long time but will be refined for the needs of bio-pharmaceutical production. Re-combinant antibodies may be the first candidates for which we will see the implementation of these technologies. In the area of antibody manufacturing we also have observed a massive improvement of cell line productivity. They have been boosted to up to 10g/L and downstream processing cannot keep pace with this development. Although in downstream processing the constant improvement of chromatography material and membrane filters enable now productivities, which would have been unthinkable just a decade ago. Whereas Biotechnology Journal has often highlighted the rise of biopharmaceuticals (for example in the special issues on biotech in China, Russia and Singapore [4–6]), several aspects of antibodies as therapeutics are addressed in this issue of BTJ. Ruuls et al. review a new class of antibody therapeutics: the age of the Umabs [7]. Zhou et al. review modern production technologies [8] and Garidel et al. report on a rapid, sensitive and economical assessment of monoclonal antibody conformational stability by intrinsic tryptophan fluorescence spectroscopy [9]. These three papers are a good attempt to get quick insights into the challenge of antibody processing.

National and Regional Development Policy: Comparing Ireland and Poland

The paper describes how, within the European single market, the economies of small nation states and regions of larger states have more in common than is often recognized. The author suggests that, as a role model in the design of a special development program for the eastern Polish regions, the example of Ireland is relevant to Polish regional administrations as they attempt to achieve the best return from capturing gains from European Union and national policies as well as building on their own, rather limited, locally devolved powers. The analysis demonstrates that during the 18-year period of three EU-assisted investment programs, the Irish economic policymaking environment shifted from one appropriate to a state on the periphery of Europe to that of a region more fully integrated into an encompassing European economy. The author concludes that the challenge facing regional policymakers is to understand how national policies can have both positive and negative regionally asymmetric impacts, while acknowledging the extremely constrained scope for designing offsetting region-specific policies within the context of the nation state. It is politically difficult to design regional policies that introduce fundamental differences between regions of a nation state other than in terms of the level of income redistribution. But if the Polish regional economies are to be renewed, big innovations are precisely what are needed.

Polypropylene Body Panels: The Next Big Innovation for Automakers?

Polypropylene Body Panels: The Next Big Innovation for Automakers?

Guest Editors' Introduction: Big Innovations in Small Packages

Conventional single-die microelectronic packages on a printed circuit board have been with us for a long time. These electronic packages provide a means of interconnecting, powering, cooling, and protecting integrated circuit chips. Today, system-in-package (SiP) provides a variety of packaging requirements for computer, consumer, aerospace, military, and medical electronic applications by stacking individual IC chips to form 3D circuits. This packaging technology offers reduced form factor to enhance high performance and reliability. The guest editors discuss some of the obstacles SiP technology must overcome for wider use and how this special issue addresses those obstacles.

Generation of ballistic electrons in nanocrystalline porous silicon layers and its application to a solid-state planar luminescent device

A principle of planar-type visible light emission is presented using ballistic electrons as excitation source. The device is composed of a semitransparent top electrode, a thin film of fluorescent material, a nanocrystalline porous silicon (nc-PS) layer, an n-type silicon wafer, and an ohmic back contact. When a positive dc voltage is applied to the top electrode with respect to the substrate, electrons injected into the nc-PS layer are accelerated via multiple-tunneling through interconnected silicon nanocrystallites, and reach the outer surface as energetic hot or quasiballistic electrons. They directly excite the fluorescent film, and then induce uniform visible luminescence. This solid-state light-emitting device, regarded as a “vacuum-less cathode-ray tube,” has many technological advantages over the conventional luminescent devices. It may lead to big innovations in the development of large-area thin flat-panel display and other electronic devices.

Big Steel, Invention, and Innovation: Reply

I. The invention, 475. — II. The innovation: domestic lag, 475. — III. The innovation: international lag, 476. — IV. Explanation of the lag, 478. — V. Conclusion, 481.

Big Steel, Invention, and Innovation, Reconsidered

I. The basic issue, 457. — II. Status of the United States industry compared with the world industry as a whole, 458. — III. The United States and European industries compared, 461. — IV. Technological and economic complications in the decision process, 465. — V. The United States and Japanese industries compared, 470. — VI. The significance of 1962, 471. — VII. Conclusions, 473.