Innovation: It Isn't a Matter of Left or Right

Johnson analyzed 300 of the most influential innovations in science, commerce and technology -- from the discovery of vacuums to the vacuum tube to the vacuum cleaner — and put the innovators of each breakthrough into one of four quadrants.

First, there is the classic solo entrepreneur, protecting innovations in order to benefit from them financially; then the amateur individual, exploring and inventing for the love of it. Then there are the private corporations collaborating on ideas while simultaneously competing with one another. And then there is what I call the "fourth quadrant": the space of collaborative, nonproprietary innovation.

The conventional wisdom, of course, is that market forces drive innovation, with businesses propelled to new ideas by the promise of financial reward. And yet even in the heyday of industrial and consumer capitalism over the last two centuries, the fourth quadrant turns out to have generated more world-changing ideas than the competitive sphere of the marketplace. The fourth quadrant, however, is not locked in a zero-sum conflict with markets.

This fourth space creates new platforms, which then support commercial ventures. Why has the fourth quadrant been so innovative, despite the lack of traditional economic rewards? The answer has to do with the increased connectivity that comes from these open environments. Ideas are free to flow from mind to mind, and to be refined and modified without complex business development deals or patent lawyers. The incentives for innovation are lower, but so are the barriers.

The problem with the fourth quadrant is that it doesn't fit neatly into our conventional left/right political categories.