Alex Tabarrok is economist and has written a short essay on ‘Launching the Innovation Renaissance‘. In this highly recommended book he analyses the current issues related to innovation – such as patents, education system and corporate rewards.
Alex Tabarrok is also known for the Tabarrok curve of decreasing innovation when patent protection increases beyond a certain level. Not dissimilar to the Laffer curve of diminishing tax returns when the tax burden increases!
His view on patents and how the increase in patent protection in the 1990’s in the US, in particular in the field of software patentability, is actually diminishing innovation instead of fostering it, is very interesting, and quite aligned with what we exposed in some early blog posts such as ‘How patent litigation cost half a trillion dollar inefficiency in the last 20 years!‘
It is quite a short book, very easy to read, and to the point. One small issue though is that it is very US-focused and would gain to be broadened more globally looking at the innovation issues world-wide. Issues are not the same everywhere, but at the end of the day innovation does benefit everybody.
Add it to your summer reading list!
