Learning By Doing: BU Law Celebrates the Publication of Lecturer in Law James Bessen’s Latest Book
Faculty Author Book Symposium brings together notable scholars of IP law, ethics, and innovation.
As part of BU Law’s Faculty Author Book Symposium Series, students, faculty, and distinguished guest scholars gathered on April 6 to discuss ideas and topics introduced in Lecturer in Law James Bessen’s new book, Learning By Doing: The Real Connection Between Innovation, Wages, and Wealth, and to celebrate its publication by Yale University Press. BU Law Professor Michael Meurer, Matthew Marx of MIT Sloan School of Management, and Lawrence Lessig of Harvard Law School joined Bessen for an engaging panel discussion.
To open discussion, Bessen began by introducing his book, and what he described as “the thread that runs through it: learning by doing.” Beseen pointed out that conversations surrounding innovation often tend to focus on invention. However, said Bessen, “there is a lot of other knowledge that must be developed—a lot that must be learned on the job.” This reality helps explain why technologies are frequently slow to develop, as workers need time to acquire certain specialized skills and knowledge.
“Technology is constantly changing our world, leading to more efficient production,” said Bessen. “In the past, technological advancements dramatically increased wages, but during the last three decades, the median wage has remained stagnant.” Bessen attributes this stagnation in part to machines performing work formerly done by humans, destroying old jobs while increasing profits for business owners and raising the possibility of ever-widening economic inequality.
In his book, Bessen argues that avoiding this inequality “will require unique policies to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to implement the rapidly evolving technologies.” He pointed out that currently, this specialized knowledge is difficult to acquire, requiring on-the-job learning. Based on his intensive research into economic history, as well as current labor markets, Bessen “explores why the benefits of technology take years, sometimes decades, to emerge. Although the right policies can hasten this process, policy has moved in the wrong direction in recent decades, protecting politically influential interests to the detriment of emerging technologies and broadly shared prosperity.”
Professor Michael Meurer, Bessen’s frequent collaborator, next took the podium. “I have worked with Jim [Bessen] for a long time, and have seen this work developing from the early stages,” said Meurer. “When I met Jim, he had already had the idea for this research in mind, and I distracted him and we worked on patents and Patent Failure for a while, but I think this is his true love—understanding the nature of the innovative process in an interdisciplinary way.”
Meurer focused his analysis on the idea of “modularity,” a term not used explicitly in Bessen’s book, but, according to Meurer, crucially related to its themes. Modularity, a notion borrowed from computer science, is the degree to which a system’s components may be separated and recombined. “In software design,” said Meurer, “modularity refers to a logical partitioning of the design that allows complex software to be manageable for the purpose of implementation and maintenance.”
Beginning in the 1990s, modularization, as opposed to the idea of the vertically integrated firm, became increasingly prevalent. This decentralization of innovation, said Meurer, carries the benefit of making research and development specialization possible, but also makes it difficult to sustain strong incentives, and can lead to the problem of knowledge poaching.
“We are interested in what we can do to analyze the question of firm—versus social—incentives to standardize the production process,” said Meurer, “and the impact on labor markets.” Illustrating his comments with an example of the early days of the typewriter, and the ways in which the absence of a standard gave particular employers more power, Meurer spoke about the connection between the idea of learning by doing and the importance of modularization.
Next to take the podium was Associate Professor of Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Matthew Marx. Marx focused on non-compete clauses in employment contracts and economic hegemony, pointing out that, coincidentally, the symposium was taking place on the anniversary of the first ever non-compete lawsuit. Marx described how non-competes were not standard until the industrial revolution, and described the “brain drain,” as well as the chilling effect on job mobility that non-competes often have.
The final speaker was Lawrence Lessig, the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Lessig’s comments focused on how the ways in which elections are funded impacts democracy. He described the phenomenon known as “Tweedism,” so called for Tammany Hall politician William Magear “Boss” Tweed, who pedaled his influence by ensuring that his desired candidate was nominated by a small group of people. Lessig likened the current state of political funding to the kind of influence wielded by Tweed. He pointed out that the current dynamic, unfavorable to income inequality, will not change until we change the way in which elections are funded.
The panel discussion was followed by a lively question and answer session, in which audience members, including BU Law Professors Wendy Gordon and Gary Lawson, voiced their opinions and questions for Bessen and the panelists.Find more information about Bessen’s book here.
Reported by Sara Womble