The New 'Emergence Economics' of Innovation and Growth, and What it Means for Communications Policy

This paper introduces the rough formula for Emergence Economics - namely, that individual agents, acting through interconnected networks, engage in the evolutionary market processes of differentiating, selecting, and amplifying certain business plans and technologies, which in turn generates a host of positive emergent economic phenomena. This formula is fueled by the latest findings from physics, biology, psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and plain common sense. The Internet then will be discussed as a notable and perhaps unique product of market and non-market forces, as a modular infrastructure, and as a platform for broad-based innovation. Next the paper will turn to some key emergent phenomena, including ideas, innovation, economic growth, and what we call Net effects such as innovation spillovers. Finally, we will bring these economic and technological elements to bear in the world of communications policy, where a proposed new framework separates out the virtues of tinkering with market gaps and inputs, versus the vices of tampering with evolutionary processes and outcomes