Conclusion

Abstract

The chapter concludes the book by placing innovation commons in a broader sweep of economic history in order to emphasize the institutional origin of innovation as an outcome of cooperative pooling of information and knowledge. It argues that cooperation to create a common pool resource in order to discover entrepreneurial opportunities is the evolutionary origin of innovation. It explains the institutional origin of innovation as the governance to facilitate this cooperation in order to solve the fundamental economic problem of discovery of entrepreneurial opportunity. The solution is in the use of institutions to pool distributed information. It explores implications for economic theory, and particularly the increased importance of institutional analysis for understanding the economics of innovation, industrial dynamics and economic evolution. It concludes by arguing that the innovation commons is the original sharing economy.