Innovation and Production

P2P Context for this discussion

In a section of P2P and Human Evolution Ch 3, entitled How far can peer production be extended, it is argued that, wherever design can be separated from production, peer to peer based design process can emerge, leading to a kind of 'built-only' capitalism.

The discussion below stresses that design is inextricably linked to a production process, and cannot be separated in such a way.

The link between innovation and industrial production

From the New York Times, cited at http://future.iftf.org/2006/12/the_link_betwee.html

"over the long run, can invention and design be separated from production? That question is rarely asked today. The debate instead centers on the loss of well-paying factory jobs and on the swelling trade deficit in manufactured goods. When the linkage does come up, the answer is surprisingly affirmative: Yes, invention and production are intertwined.

“Most innovation does not come from some disembodied laboratory,” said Stephen S. Cohen, co-director of the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy at the University of California, Berkeley. “In order to innovate in what you make, you have to be pretty good at making it — and we are losing that ability.”...

Alan Tonelson, a research fellow at the United States Business and Industry Council, argues that in this country, import penetration is rising faster in core industries like machine-tool building than it is in other countries. And these are the industries that are, or should be, centers of innovation and invention." 5http://future.iftf.org/2006/12/the_link_betwee.html)