Stickyness of Information
Description
1. Janet Hope on Stickyness:
"In such contexts, the information required to come up with new technological developments is “sticky”—it is costly to transfer from one person to another. It makes more sense for a user who already has most of that information to invent a new piece of technology than it does for a manufacturer, who would have to invest in researching what users need and how that particular innovation would function in a given industrial setting.
(Biotechnology research and development (R&D) is an area where it often makes sense for users to do most of the innovating. This is because biological information is particularly sticky; it is complex and highly location-specific. This is partly a function of the nature of biological materials and partly a function of the early stage of development of many biotechnology inventions)" (http://www.gene-watch.org/genewatch/articles/18-1Hope.html)
2. Eric von Hippel's contribution:
"Sticky information is a term used to describe information that is expensive to obtain, transmit, and employ in a new location than where it originated. “We define the stickiness of a given unit of information in a given instance as the incremental expenditure required to transfer that unit of information to a specified locus in a form usable by a given information seeker. When this cost is low, information stickiness is low; when it is high, stickiness is high,” (von Hippel, 1994).[4] Eric von Hippel has worked to define how sticky information influences innovation and how to overcome stickiness when trying to develop a new technology. Sticky information is often encountered when a manufacturers would like to know about how current users feel about their needs and if their needs are being met or not by current product lines. However this information would be difficult to acquire for the manufacturer, though it would be tremendously helpful in their pursuit of product innovation.
Information can be sticky for a number of reasons. Much information that humans have is tacit, and therefore is difficult to communicate when sharing information. Additionally, some technical information is composed of a very large number of parts. Sometimes it is difficult to communicate all of these especially when some operating procedures or techniques are so routine, a regular practitioner may forget to include such details.
The stickiness of a particular type of information can have influences on how advances are made in the field. For example, if a particular company holds much of the expertise and knowledge for a particular technology it will likely be difficult for another company to make advancements that originate from the original technology. New innovations are more likely to occur in the original company. This can also occur in a geographic manner. Local information can also be sticky and innovations that help a particular area with a special problem are likely to come from that area as well." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_von_Hippel)