Open Knowledge Regime for an Innovation Economy. MyGOSSCON 2008. Dr. Jaijit Bhattacharya Country Director, Government Strategy, SUN Microsystems Malaysia

1. Open Knowledge Regime for
an Innovation Economy
Jaijit Bhattacharya
Director, Asia South and India
Government Strategy

2. Whats Common to the following ?
2

3. Here is what is common among them..
● They are firms based on innovation
● Started by very young people
– Some by college kids
● Use Web 2.0 technologies
● Use OPEN SOURCE
Is that all ?
3

4. NONE OF THEM ARE MALAYSIAN
FIRMS
Or Singaporean or Indian or European or Chinese..
4

5. Why is that ?
● Access to capital
– Is that really true ?
● Access to technology
– They were based on
open source
technology..
● Education ?
● The Knowledge regime..
5

6. Colonization
● Extraction of economic benefit from an area of influence
through manipulation of the rules of engagement through
either force or Deceit
– Social Colonization
– Politico-military Colonization
– Digital Colonization
6

7. Digital Colonization
Unfair Rent
Intellectual International
on IPR/
Property Standards
Anti-Trust
7

8. How can we encourage innovation in
the current technological regime ?
● Discussions have noted the monopoly created through
the “reproduction” of the innovation via patents
● However, relatively less attention has been focussed in
the way innovation takes place and the structures within
which innovation is either facilitated or retarded
● Does the networked world of today carry new
possibilities for alternate structures of creating
knowledge and innovation that are currently being
impeded by the patent model of incentivising innovation?
● Is it possible to expand the notion of “commons” for
developing these possibilities?
8

9. The path of free/open software
development
● The Free Software Movement has shown that networked and open
collaborations of “hackers” can produce software of far better quality
that what the best of corporations working in isolation can manage
● The power of open, collaborative structures, working without so-
called material incentives is visible in this model
● The Free Software Movement has thus resurrected older models that
have played key roles in successful innovation in technology
development, such as the cases of the steam engine development in
Cornish mines and the blast furnace developments in Great Britain
and the US
● If we examine the increased efficiencies of steam engines and plot it
against time, we find that after the initial Watts breakthrough, during
the period that Watt had monopoly, all further improvements virtually
stopped, starting again only after the expiry of his patents 9

10. Increase in efficiency of steam engine
during and after the lapse of the patent
Interestingly, all those who made further advances to the steam engine, such as
Trevithick, did not file patents. Instead, they worked on a collaborative model in
which all advances were published in a journal collectively maintained by the
mine engineers, called the “Lean’s Engine Reporter”. This was the period that
10
saw the fastest growth of engine efficiency.

11. Path to accelerated innovation
● Evidence not only of Cornish mines but also in U.K. and the
US of blast furnaces in the 19th Century, show that collective
innovation settings lead to a faster diffusion of technology and
more innovation as opposed to the closed, patent based
monopolies
● Non-patented and open, sharing environment led to the
advances in the two key elements of industrial revolution –
steam engines and steel
● This is similar to the recent advances of Free and Open Source
Software
● An open model of developing knowledge is a faster and surer
way to innovation than conferring state monopolies 11

12. Open Knowledge Regime
So how is the World reacting ?
12

13. First Nobel Laureate in Literature 13
from Asia

14. iota
WHERE KNOWLEDGE IS FREE
Government of West Bengal

15. Why Open Source
Open-source software has been called many things: a
movement, a fad, a virus, a Communist conspiracy, even the
heart and soul of the Internet. But one point is often
overlooked: Open-source software is also a highly
effective vehicle for the transfer of wealth from the
industrialized world to developing countries.”
Andrew Leonard, “An Alternative Voice: How the Tech-Poor Can Still Be
Software Rich”
India_SIP Proposal. Sun Proprietary/Confidential: Internal Use Only 15

16. Open Source and Open Standards
Adoption
• South Africa and Belgium have
adopted ODF (ISO 23600) as a
national standard and their policy
for adopting another open
document format standard as a
national standard is:
> The standard should be
approved approved by ISO,
> it interoperates seamlessly
with the the already approved
ODF standard (i.e ISO
26300), and that
> it works seamlessly on
multiple vendor platforms
India_SIP Proposal. Sun Proprietary/Confidential: Internal Use Only 16

17. Contd.
• Government of Indonesia and
Government of Tamil Nadu have come
out with open source National Desktops
> Device manufacturers can be asked
to natively support these open
source desktops
• Education
> The main educational board of India
has come out with a draft curriculum
that promotes open source
> MIT has put its curriculum on the
internet for free distribution
> CURRIKI
> Creative Commons licenses for
books
India_SIP Proposal. Sun Proprietary/Confidential: Internal Use Only 17

18. Other Governments
• Government of Kerala have
given preference to open
source and ODF in their IT
Policy document
• Government of Brazil has
adopted ODF
• Views of senior
bureaucrats of Sri Lanka
• Many other governments
are moving in the same
path
India_SIP Proposal. Sun Proprietary/Confidential: Internal Use Only 18

19. ODF Olympiad
• Led by Government of Malaysia and Government of West
Bengal
India_SIP Proposal. Sun Proprietary/Confidential: Internal Use Only 19

20. Other Key Open Knowledge Initiatives
● Agribiotechnology
– open source biology’ platform, centered around new
microbes useful for making transgenic plants
– Australia based CAMBIA/BIOS initiative (Centre for the
Application of Modern Biology to International
Agriculture/ Biological Innovation for Open Society, the
specific arm of CAMBIA dedicated to open-source
biology)
● Open Source Drug Discovery
– Participatory mechanism for discovering NCE for tropical
and neglected diseases

21. Deaths due to Tuberculosis in 2005
Source: GlobalHealthFacts.org

22. Drug pipelines for TB and for “more profitable” diseases
Number of pharmaceutical and biotech
Number of drugs in clinical stage of companies involved in drugs development
development projects
Comparison of worldwide burden
of disease in DALY (Disability
Adjusted Life Years) for
Tuberculosis, cancer and Source: Casenghi M, DEVELOPMENT OF NEW DRUGS FOR
cardiovascular diseases TB CHEMOTHERAPY Analysis of the current drug pipeline

23. Open Source Drug Discovery by CSIR
under Prof. S. K. Brahmachari
(A Global Initiative)
www.osdd.net

24. Therefore, if we accept the concept of a
knowledge economy, what are the
instruments most appropriate for the
expansion of the knowledge economy ?
24

25. Policy Decisions..
● Move to an Open Knowledge regime to promote
innovation
● Adopt Open Source and Open Standards fanatically
● Adopt open source curriculum and move towards
participatory science
– Promote regional cooperation
● Adoption include change in government's usage of IT
– As per study by IIM Ahmedabad, Government of Delhi
would save 78% of its software procurement cost by
adopting ODF
● Block adoption of proprietary/monopolistic standards and
formats from being adopted as global standards
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● Spread the awareness

26. .
Thank you
jaijit.bhattacharya@sun.com
jaijit@dms.iitd.ernet.in