Open forms of intellectual property

Open forms of intellectual property to maximise the spread and diffusion of the idea or service. Social ventures have an interest in adopting open forms of intellectual property. They stand to benefit from a shared commons of knowledge, both in what they receive back from a reciprocal economy of information, and in extending the value and impact of the knowledge they contribute. Bio Regional, the social venture that initiated the zero carbon development at BedZed recently placed its most valuable technical information on the web for open access in order to enable its ideas to be adopted more rapidly. Open access or open licensing allows people to build on a venture’s knowledge assets and to mix together its assets with others. For some ventures this may involve the foregoing of possible income streams from the sale of that knowledge, but there are many alternative means of generating income, not least through the strengthening of the venture’s relational capital through a policy of open information.