The paper sketches a comparison between two main models for the “organization of innovation” in digital markets: the standard setting organization (“SSO”) and the silo/platform (“SILO”). The analysis focuses on four dimensions – price, speed, transparency/social accountability, and competition – of the innovation processes of these models, and aims at shedding some light on their relative value and efficiency in terms of the elusive concept of the “quality of innovation.” We argue that, whereas for two of the categories chosen for the comparison – speed and transparency/accountability – the superiority of one model over the other is relatively straightforward, as regards pricing and competition the related evaluation is more complex and the conclusions that can be drawn are more nuanced.
By Pier Luigi Parcu, Chiara Carrozza & Silvia Solidoro1
I. INTRODUCTION
In this paper, we propose an analysis of how the “organization of innovation” may affect its ultimate “quality” in certain important dimensions. In general, we start by recognizing the existence of at least four institutionally stylized models for the organization of innovation along an industrial value chain. These models can be led back to (1) a traditional firm, (2) a standard setting organization (SSOs), (3) a silo/platform system, (4) an open source community. All these “models” organize the exchange of information relating to products
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