COOPERATIVE INNOVATION IN THE COMMONS Rethinking Distributed Collaboration and Intellectual Property

1
COOPERATIVE INNOVATION IN THE COMMONSRethinking
Distributed Collaboration and Intellectual
Property for Sustainable Design Innovation

• Dissertation Defense
• Nitin Sawhney
• MIT Media Laboratory
• Thesis Committee
• Sandy Alex Pentland
• Bish Sanyal
• Mitchel Resnick
• Mark S. Ackerman

2
Clarifying Terminology

• Cooperation Collaboration (strong type of
  cooperation)
• Distributed Cooperation Peer-Production (CS vs.
  market terms)
• Open Source Free Software (distinct but related
  movements)
• Commons Public Domain (usage implies access vs.
  ownership)
• Sustainable Design Appropriate Technology
  (1990s vs. 70s)
• Community Social Collective (Localized or
  Distributed)

3
Overall Outline
INTRODUCTION
COOPERATION
COMMUNITY
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
CONCLUSIONS
4
gtgt INTRODUCTION Rethinking Sustainable Design
Innovation
Overall Outline
COOPERATION
COMMUNITY
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
CONCLUSIONS
5
Universal Human Rights A Mandate to Expand RD?

• Developmental Economists Amartya Sen Jean
  Drèze (1995)
• Economic Growth vs. Expansion of Human
  Capabilities and Freedoms
• UNDP Human Development Index
• Universal Human Rights
• Clean Water / Clean Air
• Affordable Healthcare
• Access to Primary Education
• Political Participation
• Role of RD in Sustainable Design
• Support Universal Human Rights
• Key Challenges
• Cooperation, Community and Intellectual Property

6
Appropriate Technology Movement in the 1970s

• Small is Beautiful E. F. Schumacher, 1973
• Focus on Social Impact vs. Product Profit
• Smaller Working Units, Co-operative Ownership,
  Local Resources
• Human Scale, Decentralized, Intermediate
  Technologies
• Common Sense Economics vs. Specialized
  Capital-intensive Systems
• Philosophy Economics from the heart, rather
  than the bottom line.
• Design for the Real World Victor Papanek,
  1971
• Design within Social, Economic and Political
  context
• Social and Moral Responsibility of Designers
• Design Operative throughout its Value Chain
• Seed Projects to train Indigenous designers
• Design Commune Peer Learning across Disciplines
  
• Unethical to keep Socially-valuable Ideas
  Protected

7
Why was Appropriate Technology not Influential?

• Lack of Local and Global Cooperation in Design to
  Market
• Lack of Intellectual Community to Analyze and
  Evaluate
• Lack of Property Rights to Ensure Incentives for
  Production
• Despite early successes, AT Movement interpreted
  as philanthropic grassroots activity rather than
  legitimate and sustainable enterprise.

8
Design Initiatives Today New or Reviving the
Same?

• Sustainable Design
• Green Design
• Eco-Efficiency
• Participatory Design
• Universal / Inclusive Design
• Design that Matters
• development by design
• What is so different about these new initiatives
  anyway?
• Will they too succumb to the fate of the AT
  Movement?
• What new conditions today potentially change this
  picture?

9
What if Papanek and Schumacher met Vannevar Bush?

• As We May Think Vannevar Bush, July 1945,
  Atlantic Monthly
• Consider a future device for individual use a
  Memex that stores all his books, records and
  communications, and which is mechanized so it may
  be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility
  
• Memex, a prelude to the Internet?
• Indexed Search
• Association
• Publishing
• Peer Review
• Science may implement the ways in which man
  produces, stores and consults the record of his
  race.

10
Leveraging Three Emerging Global Trends (1990s)

• Distributed Computing and Online Communities
• Emergence of Internet and Networked Technologies
  since 1980s
• Global Local Online Communities Arpanet,
  Usenet, The Well
• Distributed Computing SETI_at_home, Distributed.net
  (1995)
• Community Personal Publishing Fishwrap, Silver
  Stringers, Weblogs
• Global Dialogue on Digital Divide
  Sustainable Development
• Increasing UN Summits, Conferences and ICT
  projects everywhere
• Shifting priorities of Industry, Foundations,
  Government and Academia
• ML Computer Clubhouse, 2B1, Digital Nations,
  Media Lab Asia
• Bold New Movements Intellectual Property in the
  Public Domain
• Free Software Foundation, Richard Stallman, 1984
  (MIT)
• Open Source Software, Eric Raymond et al. 1998
• OpenCourseWare, Charles Vest, Hal Abelson et al.,
  April 2001 (MIT)
• Public Knowledge, CreativeCommons, Dspace 2002
  (MIT)

11
Emergence of ThinkCycle _at_ MIT

• Vision Distributed Problem Solving, Open
  Peer-Review and Global Repository for Challenges
  and Innovations in Sustainable Design.
• Conceptualization
• March 2000 MIT Media Lab graduate students with
  multi-disciplinary backgrounds and experiences,
  converge on a shared purpose.
• Summer 2000 Early Prototypes Developed
• Pilot Phase I
• Feb 2001 1st Design that Matters Studio at MIT
• May 2001 ThinkCycle Online Collaborative Design
  Platform Launched
• July 2001 development by design Workshop at
  MIT
• Pilot Phase II
• Feb 2002 2nd Design that Matters Studio with
  Global Partners
• April 2002 ThinkCycle v 1.0 Released 500 users
  worldwide
• May 2002 DtM Students win MIT Lemelson IDEAS
  Awards
• Expanding Globally
• July 2002 Bangalore DtM Studio Course Launched
• Nov 2002 ThinkCycle continues to expand 1700
  users worldwide

12
Key Research Challenges

• Open Collaborative Design
• Architectures for Distributed Cooperation
• Technical and Social Challenges for Collaborative
  Platforms
• Creating Communities of Practice
• Cooperative Learning and Peer-Production in
  Design
• Rethinking Intellectual Property Rights
• Conducting Social Inquiry and New IPR Frameworks

13
gtgt COOPERATION
Overall Outline
INTRODUCTION
gtgt COOPERATION
COMMUNITY
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
CONCLUSIONS
14
Distributed Cooperation and Open Source

• Cathedral and the Bazaar, Eric Raymond 1997
• Open evolution of design from public peer-review
• Bazaar Approach nurturing a distributed
  community of co-developers
• Wider parallel exploration of multiple design
  alternatives
• Many eyeballs to solve a problem distributed
  debugging
• Social and Economic Incentives (Lerner Tirole
  2000, Lakhani 2002)
• Altruism though possible, why only applicable to
  OSS?
• Solving pressing personal need or itch
• Intellectually stimulating projects with credible
  leadership
• Learning from Talented Peers
• Reputation and Visibility among peers and
  potential employers
• Potential for Commercial Payoffs switches
  voluntary incentives

15
Collaborative Tools and Knowledge Repositories

• Distributed Computing
• SETI_at_home, distributed.net, Global Grid,
  Folding_at_net, Entropia
• Online Collaboration Tools
• Lotus Notes, Microsoft NetMeeting, Groove, PTC,
  DOME
• Personal Community Publishing
• FishWrap, Pluto, Wiki Wiki Web, MovableType
• Open Source Software Repositories
• SourceForge, Savannah, FreshMeat
• Repositories for Sustainable Development
• World Bank Development Gateway, SD Gateway, Honey
  Bee
• Open Knowledge and Peer Communities
• Slashdot, Open Directory, Project Gutenberg,
  Wikipedia, OpenLaw
• ThinkCycle Converge of Distributed Design
  Collaboration and Open Knowledge Repository
  for Sustainable Design?

16
ThinkCycle Open Collaboratory for Sustainable
Design

• Topics Online Communities and Open Content
  Publishing
• ThinkSpaces Shared Team Spaces with Public
  Private Access
• Open Digital Library Peer-Reviewed Publication
  Repository
• Supporting Collaborative Communities
• Personalization
• Social Awareness
• Shared Content Management

17
Challenges Design Process, Social and Physical
Context

• Design Rationale in Engineering Practice (Gruber
  Russell 92, Karsenty 96)
• Implicitly capturing data and dependencies from
  multiple sources
• Weak explanations and context more useful than
  formal documentation
• Design rationale as an unfinished document and
  evolving group memory
• Evolving Social Norms in Cooperative Systems
  (Whittaker 94, Ackerman 98)
• Supporting unplanned informal and asynchronous
  communication
• Shared understanding and implications of evolving
  social roles
• Emerging social protocols and monitoring
  mechanisms
• Physically Co-located Communities of Practice
  (Bellotti 96, Michelis 97)
• Social awareness of ongoing cooperative
  engineering design activity
• Local mobility, walkabouts and spontaneous
  communication in design
• Creative design unstructured and highly
  influenced by its physical context
• Multiplicity of workspaces, peer-learning and
  peripheral participation

ThinkCycle Augment the Evolving Weakly
Structured Social Process of Design
18
Potential Limitations of Open Source Software
(OSS)

• Empirical Study on Open Source, Krishnamurthy
  2002
• Analyzing 100 Projects on SourceForge
• Distributed Community vs. Cave of socially-knit
  developers (median 4)
• Lack of Online Discussion generated in OSS (33
  had no messages)
• Over 60 directed towards Techie developers,
  sys admins and users
• Challenging Raymonds Cathedral Bazaar,
  Bezroukov 1999
• Defying Brooks Law with Distributed
  Co-developers?
• Distributed Debugging for Complex Code?
• Cathedral vs. Bazaar Is Open Source Democratic?
• Quality of OSS vs. Commercial Products not Proven
• Sustaining Individual Efforts Social
  Collectives
• OSS as special case of Scientific Communities?
• Reputation, Informal Exchange, Peer Review,
  Conflict, Institutional Setting

19
Distributed Cooperation for Open Product Design?

• Challenges for Peer Production Coases
  Penguin, Yochai Benkler 2001
• Incentives
• Discretization
• Coordination and Integration
• Appropriation
• User Innovation and Communities of Practice
• Access to Sticky Information for User
  Innovation (Hippel Shah 2000)
• Situated Context and Culture in Crafts
  Communities (Chandavarkar 2002)
• Need for Individual or Communal Property Rights
  (Ostrom 1990)

20
gtgt COMMUNITY
Overall Outline
INTRODUCTION
COOPERATION
gtgt COMMUNITY
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
CONCLUSIONS
21
Conducting Cooperative Design Studios

• Collaboration and Learning in Studio Courses
• WEB Project in Vermont Schools (Sherry 1998-2000)
• CoWeb in Design Engineering Courses, Georgia
  Tech (Guzdial 2002)
• LIRE in Cooperative Studios at CMU and Delft
  (Subramanian 2001)
• Design that Matters Studios at MIT (2001 and
  2002)
• Sustainable Design Curricula and Real-world
  Design Projects
• Multi-disciplinary Teams and Ongoing Field
  Evaluations
• Shared Online Archiving and Peer Review from
  Domain Experts
• Outcomes of Collaborative Design Projects
• Cholera Treatment Devices
• Passive Incubator for Premature Infants
• Household Water Treatment Bio-sand and Ceramic
  filters
• Low Cost Eyewear and Mobility Devices for the
  Visually impaired
• Bilingual Education and Affordable Reading Devices

22
Understanding Cooperative Design and Learning

• Study conducted with MIT Design Studio
• Goals and Methodology
• Demographic Information
• Understanding Evaluation Results
• General Attitudes towards Collaboration
• Evaluation of Studio Course Conducted
• Experience with Design Projects
• Usage of ThinkCycle in the Design Process
• Lessons Learned Key Themes and Recommendations
• On Studio Courses for Sustainable Design
• On Collaborative Design Platforms

Participant Demographics Male 71 (12) Female
29 (5) Undergraduate 29 (5) Graduate
29 (5) PhD Candidate 29 (5) Alumni 12
(2) 2001 41 (7) 2002 59 (10)
23
Online Access and Experience
1. Proficiency with the Internet Novice 6 (1)
Casual User 6 (1) Experienced 47 (8)
Expert 41 (7) 2. Internet Access Home 35
(6) Campus 53 (9) Work 12 (2) Fast
dialup modem (56K) 12 (2) Cable or DSL
service 6 (1) Local Area Network 29 (5)
High-speed T1 line 53 (9) 3. Web
Access Usually Connected 47 (8) Several times
a day 53 (9) 4. Email Access Usually
Connected 41 (7) Several times a day 59
(10) 5. Instant Messaging or Online Chat Usually
Connected 12 (2) Several times a day 12
(2) Once a day 12 (2) Once a week 6 (1)
Every month 6 (1) Rarely 53 (9) 6.
Created own websites or webpages Yes 65
(11)No 35 (6)

• Good Internet Access and Experience
• Regular Usage of Different Online Modalities
• Lack of Experience with Online Collaboration

24
Experience and Usage of ThinkCycle

• 1. ThinkCycle Usage
• How often do you visit ThinkCycle?
• Several times a day 6 (1) Once a day 12
  (2) Several times a week 41 (7) Once a week
  12 (2) Several times a month 18 (3) Every
  month 6 (1) Rarely visited 6 (1)
• How often do you post project-related content on
  ThinkCycle?
• Several times a week 31 (5) Several times a
  month 25 (4) Rarely Post 44 (7)
• 2. ThinkCycle Usability
• Complicated and confusing to use?
• Strongly Agree 18 (3)Agree 35 (6)Neutral
  41 (7)Disagree 6 (1)
• Very time-consuming?
• Strongly Agree 6 (1)Agree 24 (4)Neutral
  41 (7)Disagree 29 (5)
• Reviewed the ThinkCycle Tutorial?
• Yes 35 (6)No 65 (11)
• ThinkCycle Tutorial Useful?
• Agree 18 (3)Neutral 71 (12)Disagree 6
  (1)Strongly Disagree 6 (1)

• ThinkCycle Usage Lower than Expected
• 18 used daily, while 60 weekly
• Only 31 posted content several times/week
• ThinkCycle Usability
• 53 found the system complex and confusing
• 30 found it very time consuming
• Perceived Contribution of ThinkCycle
• 83 agreed it was a useful tool
• 77 mentioned it contributed to their design
• 82 wish to use online collaboration tools
• 70 found viewing searching useful
• 57 found posting content useful

25
Perceived Function and Usage of ThinkCycle

• How ThinkCycle was Used
• Shared Group Space for Coordination
• Evolving Project Repository for Documentation
• Problem Solvers Area for Learning
• Open Social Space for Awareness
• What Prevented Regular Usage?
• Lack of Time (50)
• Being Co-located with Team Experts (18)
• Overhead of Posting Context vs. Using Email (12)
• Lack of Critical Mass of Active Users Monitoring
  Site (12)
• Key Improvements Suggested
• Improved Navigational Interface
• Asynchronous Content Updates
• Real Time Collaboration and Awareness

26
Key Themes and Recommendations

• On Studio Courses for Sustainable Design
• Valuable role for real-world learning and sense
  of accomplishment
• Commitment from Faculty to Integrate Sustainable
  Design in Curricula
• Critical Mentoring Role of Student Instructors
  and Domain Experts
• Opening Academic Barriers to connect with
  Industry and Field Orgs
• On Collaborative Design Platforms
• Need better integration into curricula and
  learning goals
• Browsing, Searching, Review more prevalent than
  posting content
• Affordances and Usability of tools must match
  expectations and existing modes of
  work/communication
• Online tools most beneficial when peers
  reviewers are not co-located
• Need for Lightweight Asynchronous Design tools
  integrated with email

27
gtgt INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Overall Outline
INTRODUCTION
COOPERATION
COMMUNITY
gtgt INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
CONCLUSIONS
28
Lessons from Property Rights Theories

• Private and Communal Property Rights (Ostrom
  1990)
• Diverse Role in Different Social and
  Institutional Settings
• Emergence of Social Norms to Maintain, Establish
  and Regulate
• Common Property vs. Open Access Nature of
  Conservation?
• Distinct Classes of Rights Access, Ownership,
  Proprietorship
• IPR in Open Source and Digital Content (Boyle,
  Samuelson 2001)
• Property Contracts OS licenses like GNU GPL or
  Debian
• OSS Communal norms for access, derivative works
  and distribution
• Models for Subpatentable and Grassroots
  Innovations
• Compensatory Liability vs. Social Costs of
  Exclusive Rights (Reichman 2001)
• Collective Management of IPR for Informal
  Grassroots Knowledge (Gupta 2001)
• Property Rights in Scientific Research (Hagstrom
  65, Merton 73, Merges 96)
• Science not Public implicit mechanisms for
  informal property rights
• Scientific findings shared selectively based on
  stakes involved
• Increased value of Patents - adherence to
  community norms difficult

29
Social Perceptions of IPR in Collaborative Design

• Social Inquiry with 7 Key Design Projects from
  MIT DtM Studios
• Reasoned Perceptions about Patents and Open
  Source
• Critical Factors that Change IPR Scale, Scope
  and Stakes
• Emerging Patterns and Trajectories of IPR under
  Distinct Conditions

30
Attributes Incentives for IPR in University
Settings

• Recognition
• Control
• Preemptive Protection
• Commercial Enabler
• Real World Learning and Legitimacy
• Access for Target Community
• Moderating Transparency of Public Access
• Social Reciprocity for Cooperative Sharing
• Demystifying the IPR Process
• Institutional Support

31
Supporting Sustainable Design Innovation

• Institutional Support for Diverse IPR Models
• Awards for Sustainable Design Innovation
• Forums for Publication and Peer Review of
  Research
• Online Design Spaces with Moderated Access
• Maintaining Digital Paper Trail of Design
  Contributions
• Global Registry for Subpatentable Innovations
• Novel Licensing Arrangements

32
gtgt CONCLUSIONS
Overall Outline
INTRODUCTION
COOPERATION
COMMUNITY
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
gtgt CONCLUSIONS
33
Expanding the Global Design Community

• Design that Matters Bangalore, India
• development by design International Conferences
• Social Process and Outcomes of Distributed
  Publication and Ongoing Peer Review
• Expanding the Intellectual Community of Designers
  and Practitioners on Sustainable Development

34
Key Contributions of Thesis Research

• ThinkCycle Open Collaborative Design
• Architecture for Distributed Cooperation
• Developing a Global Design Repository and
  Collaboration Platform
• Understanding the Key Technical and Social
  Challenges
• Creating and Assessing Communities of Practice
• Co-Teaching Design Studios with Real-world
  Outcomes
• Examining Nature of Cooperative Learning and
  Online Usage
• Establishing development by design as a
  Peer-reviewed Forum
• Understanding Intellectual Property Rights
• Conducting Social Inquiry into Notions of IPR in
  Sustainable Design
• Recognizing Key Incentives, Attributes and
  Conflicts for IPR

35
Critical Role of MIT in Sustainable Design
Innovation

• Supporting Design Curricula and OpenCourseWare
  with Social and Sustainable Emphasis
• Promoting Partnerships with Industry and
  Community Organizations in Ongoing Research and
  Field Projects
• Institutional Support for Novel Intellectual
  Property Models for Dissemination and
  Commercialization of Sustainable Innovations
• Supporting Global Forums, Publications, Awards
  and Funding Grants for Sustainable Design
  Innovation
• Providing Intellectual Leadership to Expand the
  Scope of RD for Universal Human Rights

36
Thesis Completed
INTRODUCTION
COOPERATION
COMMUNITY
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
CONCLUSIONS
37
Acknowledgements

• Thesis Committee
• Sandy Pentland
• Bish Sanyal
• Mitchel Resnick
• Mark Ackerman
• (Anil Gupta)
• ThinkCycle Team
• Ravi Pappu
• Wendy Plesniak
• Saul Griffith
• Yael Maguire
• Timothy Prestero
• Ben Vigoda
• Jason Taylor
• Leo Burd
• Jesse Kipp
• Amy Banzaert
• Barbara Mack

Media Lab Faculty Chris Schmandt Walter Bender
Neil Gershenfeld Hiroshi Ishii Pattie
Maes Joe Paradiso Jack Driscoll Media Lab
Students/Staff Liz, Linda, Pat MIT
Colleagues Susan Murcott Amy Smith Alex
Slocum Joanne Kauffman David Marks Eric von
Hippel Hal Abelson Joost, Prasanga
Design that Matters Students 2001/02 development
by design organizers 2001/02 ThinkCycle
Community Friends Tony, Deb, Dimitri,
Claudia, Marina, Laxmi, Neel, Ali, Aisling,
Chris, Freedom, Alex, Sumit, Katerina, Leo,
Brian, Stefan, Sean, Natalia, Ivan, Nick, Payal,
Joey, Karim so many more. Family Priti,
Pragati, Mom and Dad Especially Vassia