Open Source Science : A New Model for Innovation

Martha Lagace's recently published interview with Karim Lakhani in Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge describes how open source software communities innovation and product development strategies can be applied to other disciplines -- in this case, medical research.

The finding -- "'...broadcasting' or introducing problems to outsiders yields effective solutions. It's often outsiders and those with "expertise at the periphery of a problem's field -- who were most likely to find answers and do so quickly." The article describes how broadcast search was used with 166 distinct scientific problems and how nearly one-third of the previously unsolved problems were solved through this process.