Boost Innovation: More Health Care, Less IP
January 6, 2008 – 1:18 amUS News interviewed a handful of cutting-edge tech gurus, asking them, “What if you were appointed innovation czar?”
Three themes run through the answers:
1) Portable, especially universal health care. People stay in uninspiring jobs because they need the health insurance. Provide this automatically, and risk takers are free to start new businesses, take chances on startups, and otherwise leave the safety net of the established economic players.
2) Provide thinner protection for legal information monopolies. Glenn Reynolds recommends simpler, thinner patent protection. Cory Doctorow urges the repeal of Title I of the DMCA, which prevents the circumvention of copyright management technologies.
3) Dump cash into targeted education programs.
Any of the three would accelerate innovation, and the combination would be explosive.