Review Phase

Joseph Schumpeter, the famed theorist of innovation, advocated for entrepreneurial breakthroughs: private sector innovation based on a new product, a new production mechanism, a new product ecology, or entering a new market. For him, innovative entrepreneurs were revolutionaries, bringing much needed disruption to the market system of established players. Others have made a caricature out of this - equating the innovative entrepreneur with a person, who thrives on breaking the rules and despises existing rules and norms. more >>

This research project, headed by Centre director Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, looks at the limits of governability of virtual worlds. In his previous work, "Napster's Second Life?", Mayer-Schönberger analyzed the regulatory dynamic among providers of virtual worlds. As virtual world slowly move towards more permissive regimes of user rights (spearheaded perhaps by Linden Lab's decision to let users of SecondLife retain their intellectual property rights), virtual world providers have fewer options to differentiate themselves from competitors. Size continues to play a dominant role, but governance may increase in importance. more >>