Innovation through peer production

Newsweek article highlights the role of freely shared information in R&D.

"The BIOS Initiative, recently launched by Cambia, an Australian nonprofit, aims to make publicly available an alternative technology to the patented method of inserting a gene into a plant. (People are free to patent any resulting discoveries.) A Web site called BioForge.net, modeled after SourceForge.net in software, will be a clearinghouse for open biology projects"

Article also quotes Eric von Hippel who is MIT's head of innovation and entrepreneurship and have been writing on user-lead innovation.