Open Economy Principles

Includes empowering the periphery, connecting network nodes, leveraging self-interest, supporting self-directed work, and building transparency and trust.

Real World Application

Urban frontiers as innovation zones
An open economy empowers innovation at the periphery—it allows individuals with local, tacit expertise to effect change on the whole system through locally appropriate solutions. MIT’s FabLab does this by bringing personal fabrication tools to rural India or remote Norway and helping residents innovate in ways that fit their distinct needs. Lightweight infrastructures will provide modular, flexible systems for urban social entrepreneurs, cutting-edge thinkers, and expert users to customize meaningful solutions to local problems that could be sources of innovation for educational districts.

Technologies of cooperation leverage the open economy
An emerging set of social technologies—from mobile computing and reputation systems to open, collective knowledge repositories and peer-to-peer production—is greatly expanding human capacity to cooperate. These technologies will drive experimentation with new forms of economic production, social organization, and civic governance. Specifically, cooperative technologies facilitate group formation, network building, transparency, aggregating distributed resources, and leveraging self-interest to create broader social value.