Communications of the ACM
Innovation from the Edges
Credit: Eshkin
Seen from the perspective of a knowledgeable observer circa 1990, the Internet would have appeared to be ill-suited for commercial life. There was no orientation toward market needs. The National Science Foundation (NSF) allowed users to develop applications that were not for sale, and most applications stressed technically advanced functionality, not user-friendliness. The network behind the scenes also did not charge prices, and seemed not to provide experience relevant to organizing a mass market for data services from many providers.
Compare those impressions with what did happen. The NSF privatized the Internet backbone, and not long thereafter the growth and deployment of the commercial Internet changed the way everyone lives, works, and plays. Most astonishing of all, the deployment of the commercial Internet brought about these changes at a fast pace. These characteristics are typically associated with only the most transformative technologies, such as the deployment of electricity or the automobile.
Comments
Dennis Van Dusen
For a crowd sourced innovation engine (still being developed, but operating), see Loci (loci.io or locipro.com )
To see the direction being taken, you might enjoy seeing the underlying patent at Patent US20140075004 - System And Method For Fuzzy Concept Mapping, Voting Ontology Crowd Sourcing ... - Google Patents at http://google.com/patents/US20140075004#forward-citations (http://google.com/patents/US20140075004 for top).
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