User:BBallou

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Resume:

Brendan Ballou is a research assistant at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, focusing on the Institutional Cooperation Project. Previously he has worked on the Open Net Initiative and Jonathan Zittrain's Future of the Internet blog. Beyond the Berkman Center, Brendan has been involved with Public Knowledge, Free Culture, and One Laptop Per Child. Brendan is also an avid runner, a terrible cook, and an okay stand-up comic.

Contact data:

  • Brendan Ballou - brendan.ballou(at)gmail.com
  • Phone - 917 684 3900


Role in the team:

  • Primarily assist Carol shaping the methodology and finding and cataloging relevant bibliography.

Weekly tasks and results:

week of 2/16/09:

  • minor revisions to the wiki, upload old bibliography
    • result: completed.
      • Carol feedback 02/24: please, insert links for papers or its abstracts
  • write blog post on defining the commons
    • result: completed.
      • Carol feedback 02/24: Thank you. For now the blog is not a priority anymore.

week of 2/23/09:

  • read up on Neil Fligstein, Pierre Bourdieu, and Actor Network Theory.
    • result: completed.
      • Carol feedback 02/24: I had a meeting with Yochai today and we will focus exclusively for the next month on field study. Thus, the follow-up task here is develop a skeleton in the wiki to be addressed by the RAs in each field. This skeleton will guide the RAs and me in our field-research. Neil Fligstein and Pierre Bourdieu may be helpful in this activity. We should schedule a call to discuss this. My agenda allow a call tomorrow afternoon afternoon. You should call me as soon as you can, after 2pm.
  • send comments on Case Coding system
    • status: completed
  • Build a site map for our wiki, since it is expanding a lot.
    • status: completed
  • transfer site contents to public wiki, once it is established
    • status: completed. If everyone can check to make sure that the content they wrote was transferred correctly, it would be most appreciated
  • clean up the wiki
    • in process. I've tried different formats for the front page to increase readability. Feedback is most appreciated - I'd hate to design something that no one else finds readable
  • add links to the Economics of IP bilbiography
    • status: long-term ongoing
  • Create a "Google documents" accessible by our group, where we can share and see documents that are being produced and are too complex (in terms of formatting) to insert in our wiki. Send link, user and password for ICP working team participants. Create a "neutral" user with "neutral" password that we can give to Yochai or visitors.


week of 3/2/09

week of 03/09/2009

  • Task: Answer questions in the Field Research Methodology outlined in BGP Field Research by referring to bibliography - offer prose and bullet points relevant to each item, citing each source carefully
    • deadline: Friday, 03/13/2009 (initial results) / this will be an ongoing task
    • status: First push completed. Now focusing on finding instances of cooperation in private companies, universities, and non-profits
      • Carol feedback:
  • task: Document and Expand on initial bibliography for BGP field study on appropriate page - submit them to Carol and decide with her which ones are relevant and need to be summarized in AcaWiki.org - this task should develop in tandem with task of answering questions in the Study of the field (this will be an ongoing task)
    • deadline: Friday, 03/13/2009 (initial results) / this will be an ongoing task
    • status: resources added and formatted. References for most frequently used resources copied in BGP_Akawiki_Sources
      • Carol feedback:

Into the bibliography links here https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/commonsbasedresearch/Biotechnology_-_Genomic_and_Proteomics#Bibliography_addressing_research_outline

week of 03/16/2009

  • Further develop answers to the questions in Field Research Methodology
    • Barriers to entry/exit: completed
    • Collaboration in Private Companies: Brendan to Carol: do you have easy access to HBS articles? Columbia has only some of the articles. I am thinking specifically of the articles in Bibliography_for_Item_12_in_BGP
    • Commons Based Approaches in BCG: completed

week of 3/22/2009

  • Begin answering Field Research Questions for Narrative producers. our focus is to find relevant information to complete the IP profile of the main entities that are the constituencies of the BGP field, and how this evolve in time towards openness or closeness. Any additional investigation or case need to be seen in this framework. As explained, the main objective is to map these entities in our mapping device (the quadrant that portraits participation and regulation). Thus, by understanding how entities treat their knowledge outputs (data, narratives and tools), what are the business models that emerged and how/why they evolve, we will understand "who", "what", "where", "how" and "why" questions. The Field Research Methodology provides the structure to find this kind of information and help us to structure our findings.

week of 4/6/2009

Week of 4/12/2009

Week of 4/20/2009

  • Research TDI kernal for treating tropical diseases
  • Answer: Is there a tendency towards secrecy? Keep focus on Biotech
  • Expand: Patenting by private firms (Check PTO, Google Patents, Andrew - patent lists, NBER - http://www.nber.org/)
  • Keep list of questions for Genentech (or other cias) employees
  • Answer: Open attitude towards IP - is this still true? Focus on companies' attitudes towards employee publications
    • ongoing. will be at: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/commonsbasedresearch/Overview_of_Economics_of_Intellectual_Property_in_BGP#Openness_and_Publication_outputs
    • question about how to approach this: there aren't really any studies about who contributes quantitatively more to journals (universities vs. companies), and the literature I found about why people join biotech firms said little about the right publish. Perhaps it would worthwhile to ask the genentech employee if the ability to publish had any impact on her joining the firm? Or maybe it would make more sense to look at which company publishes the most articles, and correlate that with job satisfaction or competitiveness to enter the firm. It would only be a rough answer, but it would be a start
  • Answer : How does knowledge flow in this field?
  • Expand Who relates to whom in what way? Firms, Universities, government, etc. Try to draw this relations with different types of arrows representing flows of different things (such as technology, money, people)
  • Compare openness of Biotech and Software and Pharma industries (do not go deep). Focus on comparison with Pharma (if we realize that biotech is copies pharma). Focus on changing patent law - big dispute between software and biotech (just to understand the industry position towards patents)
  • under "How many companies?" who are the 8 largest companies
  • find more recent number on revenue - find as a percentage of GDP - check ORBIS DATABASE
  • Research role of universities in innovation. Take a look at AUTM.net organization and data about university patenting in biotech
  • Answer: How important is public funding in this field? What is the Obama admin doing? What have previous administrations done?
  • Look at tendencies towards openness or enclosure. Look at textbooks section (I mentioned this related to the policy/law research.....so, you can have a broader understanding on what we are looking for....)
    • what about NCBI
  • Expand: When IP Doesn't Matter by opening a new subsection
    • look about NIH - open access mandate
  • Examine cost structure of the field. Might have to do this by company (also, check ORBIS database....and anual financial reports of firms...if you find these, just put links to them in the wiki)
  • Section 6 (will be changed to section 7 and so on...as a new section 6 in government' institution need to be opened) - change table to have checkbox for data, narratives, and tools (actually no.....do not do that...lets rethink that later....) (just specify what kinds of products this companies are focused on and if they are diversifying their products in time)
  • Revise Dynamics of the Biotech field - add dates, start talking about specific companies

ICP Team
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