Collaborators please for ‘Open-IP’ business models research

The Open Rights Group, in collaboration with 01zero-one and funded by the London Development Agency, is beginning an exciting new research project, examining how the internet enables creative entrepreneurs to develop innovative business practices by being more open with their intellectual property. Creative Business in the Digital Era will examine new business models and the wider context in which they sit, culminating in one day-long and two evening courses at which we will share our findings.

In the fine tradition of eating our own dogfood, we are developing the course out in the open, and under a Creative Commons licence, using a wiki. But we need your help. We have only a couple of months to do our research, so we need you to help us shape of the course, figure out the format of the case studies, and carry out research. Time is genuinely tight – we must complete all the course materials by the beginning of February, ready for delivery in March.

Our focus is on business models and artists producing IP, who give away – gratis – some of their product, whether under an open license or otherwise. So we’re talking about authors publishing books under Creative Commons and in print, musicians offering both free and pay-for music, or software developers using APIs. But its still pretty loose – we don’t yet have hard boundaries and are kind of in survey mode this month.

If all this sounds exciting to you, and you want to get involved, then there are several things you can do: