Collaborative Production in the 21st Century

It's clear today that the world is changing rapidly. Innovation is taking place faster. Digital platforms are permeating ever greater portions of our lives, transforming the ways we work, play, and interact with one another. Pulling from various economic, communications, and other disciplines, this thesis attempts to present a unified framework for the changes occurring, attempting to characterize the specific mechanisms by which our global society's system of innovation is evolving. This analysis is not intended to be prescriptive, but rather to present a conceptual schema that can help asses the key forces at play in different situations.In general, the thesis argues that declining transaction costs and wider distribution of productive capabilities are shifting our societal economic organization to a more collaborative, so called 'Services Oriented' architecture. This, the thesis suggests, implies a shift toward production that increasingly is 1) distributed, involving partnerships rather than internal efforts and 2) interactive, involving recurring relationships between producers and consumers rather than one-off transactions. The thesis attempts to explore both the micro and macro level drivers of these changes, as well as the specific limits bounding them and a brief discussion of their implications for other areas