How the pace of innovation is increasing, and what might stop it.

I believe the pace of innovation is accelerating. There are accelerating returns because we invent new tools that create new tools. And most, if not all, innovation is an incremental process that builds on the knowledge and ideas that precede it. So more innovation, means more to build on. That is exponential growth. The early part of an exponential growth curve may look very similar to linear growth. We have rules in place on the reuse of ideas and knowledge that were put in place when innovation looked linear. I believe patents and copyright will become an inhibition on innovation, if they haven’t already. There purpose is to increase innovation. So I propose that as the pace of innovation speeds up, the terms of patents and copyrights should be reduced.