Breaking Down Digital Barriers: When and How ICT Interoperability Drives Innovation

Urs Gasser, Harvard University - Berkman Center for Internet & Society; University of St. Gallen, and John G. Palfrey Jr., Harvard University - Berkman Center for Internet & Society

8/14/2008
(Original Publish Date: 3/6/2008)

Interoperability, like openness, is something that we generally think of as a good thing in the context of information and communications technologies (ICTs). One of the reasons why we tend to like interoperability is that we believe it leads to innovation, as well as other positive things like consumer choice, ease of use, and competition. In this study, we have done a deep-dive on three cases - DRM-protected music, Digital ID, and Mashups in the Web services context - as well as cursory reviews of other narratives with a goal of understanding a range of views on how interoperability comes to pass, what is optimal in terms of interoperability, how interoperability relates to innovation, and how we ought to approach achieving greater interoperability. Our research suggests that these inclinations about interoperability are on the mark in a general sense, but that the picture is filled with nuance. Interoperability does not mean the same thing in every context. Interoperability is not always good for everyone all the time. And the relationship between interoperability and innovation, while it likely exists in most cases, is extremely hard to prove.