The role of government in product innovation
We tend to think that innovation and new ideas will always happen, but this isn’t really the case. They tend to happen when they’re supported by the right environment and governmental protection.
An innovative new product might work especially well in one climate, but not in another -- for instance, expensive goods in a recession. Another example is that of intellectual property. It’s all good and well thinking up new and innovative ideas, but the fact is that bringing them to the market is often an expensive exercise.
If a company doesn’t have faith that their new product will be sufficiently protected from imitators, then they’ll be less likely to innovate. For this reason, intellectual property plays an important role in innovation.
To succeed, there must be a relationship between the government, companies, and the market. If the government is serious about protecting intellectual property, then you’ll find that there are more developments. If they’re not, then there’s a lack of faith that the product will be protected: and this, of course, would be a big factor when it comes to deciding whether to inject money into developing new products or not.
Not that weak governmental control has to suppress all innovation, it just changes things. For example, a company would then have to produce hyper-advanced products that are difficult to copy, or rapidly develop new products to outpace imitators.
To learn more about this, take a look at the infographic that’s outlined below, which was produced by the University of Alabama Birmingham.
