The conventional wisdom is that the formation of patent pools is welfare enhancing when patents are complementary, since the pool avoids a double-marginalization problem associated with independent licensing. This conventional wisdom relies on the effects that pooling has on downstream prices....

From the 1930s through today, many economists have conceived of large technical systems for the production of goods and services as a series of transactions. This point of view has led eminent economists to assert that transactions are the fundamental unit of analysis in the economic system.This...

In Chapter 2 we saw that the most economical locations for transactions in a task network are the so-called thin crossing points—places where transfers are easy to define, count and pay for. However, in many places in the task network, transfers of material, energy, and information are so...

A technology is a specific way to achieve a material goal. It describes a feasible path—a recipe—by which a group of people can arrive at a goal that none could achieve individually. Technical recipes thus require linkages between and among the various contributors to the technical...

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce two new building blocks to the theory of how technology shapes organizations. The first is a new layer of organization structure: a business “ecosystem.” The second is the economic concept of “complementarity.” Ecosystems are groups of...

Organizations are formed in a free economy because an individual or group perceives value in carrying out a technical recipe that is beyond the capacity of a single person. Technology specifies what must be done, what resources must be assembled, what actions taken in order to convert stocks of...

Functional analysis as set forth in the last chapter decomposes a technical system into functional components that do things to advance the system’s purpose and the goals of its designers. Functional analysis in turn can be used to construct value structure maps of technical systems. Such maps...

The application of machine learning (ML) to big data has become increasingly important. We propose a model where firms have access to the same ML, but incumbents have access to historical data. We show that big data raises entrepreneurial barriers making the creative destruction process less...

The application of machine learning (ML) to big data has become increasingly important. We propose a model where firms have access to the same ML, but incumbents have access to historical data. We show that big data raises entrepreneurial barriers making the creative destruction process less...

This paper explores the current state of play and likely future direction of business-tobusiness electronic commerce in the South African manufacturing sector. The empirical evidence presented draws on 120 firm-level interviews, and 31 personal interviews with industry experts. The research...