Organizational Perspectives on Intellectual-Property Reform

This chapter presents a novel organizational perspective on “patent reform” in the U.S. Supreme Court, Congress, and the federal courts during 2006–2020. Debates between proponents of strong and weaker patents can be understood as a conflict between entities that rely on integrated business models for monetizing R&D, which deploy non-IP complementary assets to capture returns on innovation, and entities that rely on non-integrated business models, which monetize R&D through licensing and other IP-dependent contractual relationships. Weak-IP regimes induce an organizational bias that favors integrated and platform-based firms that capture returns on innovation within internal capital and information markets while impeding entry by smaller, R&D-specialized entities that capture returns on innovation through external capital and informational markets. By contrast, strong-IP regimes enable firms and other entities to select from the full range of more and less integrated structures for executing the innovation and commercialization process.

Too Much Trust in Group Decisions: Uncovering Hidden Profiles by Groups and Markets

A crucial challenge for organizations is to pool and aggregate information effectively. Traditionally, organizations have relied on committees and teams, but recently many organizations have explored the use of information markets. In this paper, the authors compared groups and markets in their ability to pool and aggregate information in a hidden-profiles task. In Study 1, groups outperformed markets when there were no conflicts of interest among participants, whereas markets outperformed groups when conflicts of interest were present. Also, participants had more trust in groups to uncover hidden profiles than in markets. Study 2 generalized these findings to a simple prediction task, confirming that people had more trust in groups than in markets. These results were not qualified by conflicts of interest. Drawing on experienced forecasters from Good Judgment Open, Study 3 found that familiarity and experience with markets increased the endorsement and use of markets relative to traditional committees.

Self-resolving Information Markets: A Comparative Study

Traditional information markets (TIMs) are resolved with reference to events external to the markets, such as some particular candidate winning an election. However, when making long-term forecasts or evaluating counterfactuals, such resolution is not an option. Hence, the need for self-resolving information markets (SRIMs), resolved with reference to features internal to the markets themselves. The present paper demonstrates experimentally that the market profiles of otherwise identical TIMs and SRIMs show significantly higher degrees of correlation than do randomly paired markets, and that the average accuracies of TIMs and SRIMs are practically equivalent. This supports the so-called face-value hypothesis, on which a convention will arise on SRIMs of taking the question under consideration at face value and betting accordingly, in the same way as on TIMs—in which case SRIMs have the potential of matching TIMs in accuracy while shedding their limitations in relation to long-term predictions and counterfactuals.

Information Markets

Chapter 6 extends market theory to markets of information and content. Although information exchanges are not monetary, the motivations of providers and seekers are important for information intermediaries in designing better platforms. Just as with previous markets there is the similar challenge of determining the quality of information or content. This chapter shows that information consumption models can be divided into three categories: searching, farming, and feeding. Some are more efficient and some are more diversifying, and their advantages and disadvantages are discussed. Many signs show that the farming model is beginning to challenge the dominant searching model, but the concepts behind farming can also help searching.

Replicating Natures Fabric - High Information Markets and the Sustainability of Global Seafood

Misinformation currently plagues our global seafood market. Because this globally interconnected, complex and dynamic market parallels food webs and places humans as apex predators, we can apply our understanding of nature’s structure to better understand the consequences of misinformation in the global seafood system. Here, we argue that this misinformation undermines the sustainability of our global seafood system because it obscures consumers from making informed, responsible—and potentially stabilizing—decisions. it opposes a common stabilizing structure of nature’s food webs. We first describe how food webs contain a remarkably repeated structure: the generalist module, characterized by a flexible mobile generalist predator that can adapt to resource variability by making rapid smart foraging switches between resources in space. Next, we discuss how the global seafood system parallels nature’s food webs. We end by arguing that these same tools combined with proper seafood labelling have the potential to grant consumers the ability to create a high information market that allows consumers to make rapid and informed decisions. The roles that predators play in nature’s food webs strongly indicate that information is critical to aid global seafood sustainability and the maintenance of marine biodiversity.

Self-resolving Information Markets: An Experimental Case Study

On traditional information markets (TIMs), rewards are tied to the occurrence (or non-occurrence) of events external to the market, such as some particular candidate winning an election. For that reason, they can only be used when it is possible to wait for some external event to resolve the market. In cases involving long time-horizons or counterfactual events, this is not an option. Hence, the need for a self-resolving information market (SRIM), resolved with reference to factors internal to the market itself. In the present paper, we first offer some theoretical reasons for thinking that, since the only thing that can be expected to be salient to all participants on a SRIM is the content of the question bet on, a convention will arise of taking that question at face value, and betting accordingly, in which case trading behaviour on SRIMs can be expected to be identical to that on TIMs. This is the ‘face value’ hypothesis. If this hypothesis holds, SRIMs have the potential of incorporating the accuracy of TIMs while shedding their limitations in relation to long-term predictions and the evaluation of counterfactuals. We then report on a laboratory experiment that demonstrates that trading behaviour can indeed come out highly similar across SRIMs and TIMs. As such, the study can be thought of as an experimental case study on SRIMs. Finally, we discuss some limitations of the study, and also points towards fruitful areas of future research in light of our results.