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Event Details
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How the Internet Became Commercial: Innovation, Privatization, and the Birth of a
New Network
Shane Greenstein, MBA Class of 1957 Professor of Business Administration
How do major technologies deploy and spread? Shane Greenstein will use illustrations from his new book, How the Internet Became Commercial: Innovation, Privatization, and the Birth of a new Network, to deconstruct Internet exceptionalism, the prevalent idea that the Internet defies economic logic.
All major technologies deploy when they overcome the circular conundrum and an adaptation conundrum. The circular conundrum arises because maximum value from the commercial technology requires all components to work together. That requires coordinating complementary operations and investments from many firms who have few direct incentives to cooperate. The adaptation conundrum arises because commercial technologies generate value in disparate circumstances. To succeed on a large scale, the technology needs to spread into new applications and circumstances and to prove distinctively valuable to everyone who might use them. Who will take the risks and create viable businesses?
This talk will outline how firms in various markets addressed the conundrums noted above during the commercialization of the Internet and will show how the Internet followed economic archetypespatterns of economic behavior that show up repeatedly throughout history. Greenstein will highlight the lessons of this observation, and how those lessons apply to thinking about new major technologies, such as Big Data and the Internet of Things.
All major technologies deploy when they overcome the circular conundrum and an adaptation conundrum. The circular conundrum arises because maximum value from the commercial technology requires all components to work together. That requires coordinating complementary operations and investments from many firms who have few direct incentives to cooperate. The adaptation conundrum arises because commercial technologies generate value in disparate circumstances. To succeed on a large scale, the technology needs to spread into new applications and circumstances and to prove distinctively valuable to everyone who might use them. Who will take the risks and create viable businesses?
This talk will outline how firms in various markets addressed the conundrums noted above during the commercialization of the Internet and will show how the Internet followed economic archetypespatterns of economic behavior that show up repeatedly throughout history. Greenstein will highlight the lessons of this observation, and how those lessons apply to thinking about new major technologies, such as Big Data and the Internet of Things.