Permissionless Innovation

It’s not enough to be able to tell a story.  In today’s world, creativity is critical for corporations to remain relevant.  Businesses are constantly competing both for time and against time to find the most innovative and low-cost ways to get their products and services to their target audiences.  It’s imperative for Communications professionals to know the overall business strategy of a company and how to communicate that to the outside world, as well as how to recognize an ends to the means of the same goal.  Financial literacy has now become an important factor for the Communications professional.

Permissionless innovation, or the freedom to explore new technologies or businesses without seeking prior approval, is one way that technology has changed communications (Chesbrough & Van Alstyne, 2015).  Joi Ito, head of MIT Media Lab, breaks down innovation in terms of Before Internet (BI) and afterwards.  Before the internet, Ito explains, humanity was more futuristic.  Society was constantly thinking of ways to predict the future and plan accordingly.  In present day, Ito explains, we need to be more now-ists, due to the speed and complexity of the internet.  The internet provides us with the opportunity to try new and creative endeavors, to communicate, and to distribute at essentially no cost.  Ito encourages us to recognize trends, to recognize what people and society needs, and to just go for it.  Create and innovate. This is the future.  

Through permissionless innovation, we are encouraged to embrace an entrepreneurial attitude and  not be afraid to take risks with new technologies.  It opens up a world of communications for humans, where we can experiment with social media, blogging, and other forms of self-publishing.  Others may use permissionless innovation to write HTML, or a software program, or even download a client database.  Our creativity is not being regulated.  It's opened the world up to so many possibilities in what we create and the way in which we communicate.  As author Adam Thierer (2014) states, "Permissionless innovation is about the creativity of the human mind to run wild in its inherent curiosity and inventiveness. In a word, permissionless innovation is about freedom".

References

Chesbrough, H., & Van Alstyne, M. (2015). Permissionless Innovation | August 2015 | Communications of the ACM. Retrieved from http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/8/189837-permissionless-innovation/abstract

Thierer, A. (2014). Permissionless innovation: The continuing case for comprehensive technological freedom. Retrieved from http://mercatus.org/sites/default/files/Permissionless.Innovation.web_.pdf