Information for Innovation: Managing Change from an Information Perspective

Information is not taken seriously. Much is said about the information age, the information economy, the information society, and particularly about information technology, but little about information itself. If these are important, then so is information. But information is not as other goods: it has some peculiar characteristics. It cannot be displayed for sale without giving it away in the process. Sold, it goes to the buyer but still remains with the seller. Buying entails expressing demand in ignorance for buyers who do not know just what it is that they do not know. Such characteristics have long been recognised by economists, but it is not generally economists who have most to say about the importance of information. This privilege is exercised by senior managers, who speak passionately about knowledge-based, learning organizations; by politicians and public servants, anxious to compensate with policy and programme for the information failure of organization and market; and by specialists in telecommunications and information technology, bent on adding value to what they treat as just a commodity. All are particularly enthusiastic about the innovation which springs from information. Information usually requires new information. Finding, acquiring, and mixing this new information with that already in use presents problems, not least because complex information transactions are required rather than simple information transfer. Solutions can be devised, but only by accommodating the characteristics of information. This book contrasts the way innovation is normally regarded in a variety of areas from eighteenth-century agriculture to high technology, from technology transfer to industrial espionage, from corporate strategy to patents and independent inventors with how it appears from what is termed an 'information perspective', that is one that puts information first. The results are intriguing, suggesting that radically different approaches to innovation (and organization) should be considered.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1: The Nature of Information 2: Change and Innovation 3: Sources of Information for Change and Innovation 4: The Flow of Information 5: The Mixing of Information 6: Resistance to Information: The Organization and the Independent Inventor 7: Information Intrigue: Controlling the Flow of Information 8: Information Innocence: High-Technology Policy and Technology Parks 9: Transfer without Transaction: Policy for Information Acquisition 10: Hidden Information Flow: Innovation in Eighteenth-Century Agriculture 11: The Illusion of Order: Innovation and the Patent System 12: Information and Control: Strategic Change in the Organization Concluding Thoughts

About the Author :
Co-editor of the journal Prometheus (Carfax) 1977-87 Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader, Department of Economics, University of Queensland

Review :
`Information for Innovation is a delight to read. The author attacks the subject with the intellectual incisiveness for which he is renowned. It will intrigue and challenge a diverse readership' Jane Millar - THES Information for Innovation, by MacDonald is an interesting book, providing a fresh new perspective on a topic of particular interest to economies possessing ever more increasing knowledge intensive production processes. It is illustrated by a very broad and diverse range of examples, that demonstrate the general applicability of the chosen approach. Marcus Hagermeister, Information Economics and Policy, 2000