Nieman Foundation at Harvard
Every week, our friends at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society invite academics and other thinkers to discuss their work over lunch. Thankfully for us, they record the sessions. Last month, the Center hosted renowned MIT professor Eric von Hippel to discuss the broad — and, for us, compelling — topic of “how innovation works.” He argues that open collaboration, and end-user innovation, are competing with producer innovation in many economic sectors — and may, in fact, displace it. And the implications of that shift are as profound for the news media as they are for other institutions.
In the video above, the professor discusses the transition we’re in and its far-reaching implications. Ethan Zuckerman did his usual fine job of blogging the talk, for those who prefer to read their innovation theory rather than hear it. Ethan:
To explain his body of work, von Hippel explains that he’s tried to bring thinking about the communications space into the world of physical things, examining how processes we think of as affecting digital media can also apply to other forms of innovation.
