Introduction

Preface

The current world political climate, post-economic crisis and creative industry’s aggressive responses to disruptive technologies and innovations are forcing governments and policy makers around the World to re-address the effectiveness, suitability and relevance of long established institutions in a digitally connected and distributed world. In the pursuit of economic gain, IP holders, distribution networks and content creators appropriate rent from their internally generated property. These institutions at the same time encroach upon strongly held ethics and values within the hacker political landscape, in some cases reaching critical intersections where the boundaries between open and proprietary developed property become blurred via divergent goals and interests. As a result globally distributed hacker teams emerge and operate at the fringes, self-organising, governing and innovating. The aim being open and unrestricted generation of higher value peaks than those developed internally by the firm; held back by tight internal product development cycles built with openly developed systems. This monograph is an in depth discussion of this complex environment and its impacts on firm innovation and hacker innovators communities with the intention of opening up future research avenues.

Introduction