1. AN INTEROPERABILITY PRINCIPLE FOR KNOWLEDGE
CREATION AND GOVERNANCE: THE ROLE OF
EMERGING INSTITUTIONS
Carolina Rossini
Director for International Intellectual Property
carolina@eff.org

3. • “‘Knowledge Governance’ brings together fresh
theoretical insights and new empirical evidence on
an important challenge: how to design public
policies and institutions to promote knowledge
creation and diffusion to promote economic
development. This collection of essays will be an
important source of ideas for researchers and
policymakers alike.” —Bhaven N. Sampat, Columbia
University

4. Chapter 8
of “Knowledge Governance: Reasserting the Public Interest
By Wilbanks and Rossini
• This study examines the relationships among funders, research
institutions, and the “units” of knowledge creation and local knowledge
governance, which are hosted inside research institutions. Our goal is to
uncover the knowledge spaces where commons- based approaches, peer
production and modes of network-mediated innovation have – and have
not – emerged and to examine the conditions under which these
approaches either flourish or are discouraged. Our rationale is that the
emergence of novel, democratized and distributed knowledge
governance represent a meaningful complement to more traditional
systems, with the potential to create new public knowledge goods
accessible to a global civil society and spur innovation in previously
unforeseen ways.
́
“Knowledge Governance: Reasserting the Public Interest,” edited by Leonardo Burlamaqui, Ana Celia
Castro and Rainer Kattel. London: Anthem Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780857285355.

5. knowledg
e and the
network...

6. knowledge in
“permanent beta”

7. knowledge
units:
“text”
“data”
“tools”

8. text knowledge governance:
registration
certification
dissemination
preservation

9. data knowledge
governance

10. tool
knowledge
governance

11. new rules...

12. “distributed”inno
vation
1. shared
standards
2. shared
infrastructure

13. not taking
root in

14. not taking root
in institutions

15. old
institutions,
new roles:
university as
public spaces

16. interoperability as
essential
condition
for new
institutions

17. The idea of interoperability as something that
scales from technology to knowledge itself
has emerged alongside the rise of the digital
commons in culture and software. In this
view, it is not only computer networks that
must interoperate, but intellectual property
rights and semantic understanding, so that
distributed peer production of knowledge
can make the leap from an encyclopedia into
the sciences and other research disciplines.

18. “separate concerns” in the early design of
the Internet itself enabled the emergence of
distributed innovation and knowledge
construction

19. • it promises to transform the role of the individual
inside academia by allowing more and greater access
to knowledge, faster publishing and correction,
more democratic peer review, at the same time
that it may also allow less traditional actors to enter
the knowledge governance systems, as editors,
readers, critics and, hopefully at least occasionally,
new partners.

20. Actors in
Traditional
Knowledge
Governance
Industry
University Government

21. Industry
Universit Government
y
connect these three together
into
network for e-R&D

22. Role of
University
sufficiently complex
internal policy of
intellectual property to
allow the open innovation
and user-driven innovation
models, that asks for A2K
strategies and governance
cyberinfrastruct

23. Universit
y

24. Industry
Universit Government
y

28. interopera
bility as
first
principle

29. judge
decisions
by their
“environme

30. if you care about the emergence of
knowledge federation systems that
allow broader access to knowledge)
you may have to have some kind of
intervention…and not wait for
organic emergence.

32. Additional material
• “Knowledge Governance: Reasserting the Public
́
Interest,” edited by Leonardo Burlamaqui, Ana Celia
Castro and Rainer Kattel. London: Anthem Press,
2012. ISBN: 9780857285355.
• http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/events/luncheon/
• http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/commonsbasedresearc
h/Industrial_Cooperation_Project