When and How ICT Interoperability Drives Innovation

Urs Gasser, and John Palfrey

6/13/2008
(Original Publish Date: 11/1/2007)

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.