Jinn of Quality and Risk

Three recent books have captured the business community's attention by detailing the way companies have turned patents into cash: Rembrandts in the Attic, From Ideas to Assets, and Edison in the Boardroom. US corporations are estimated to be missing $1 trillion a year by not capitalising on their existing patents. Companies such as startups IPValue and ThinkFire are offering their services to mine patent portfolios; they are attempting to coin innovation. [Forbes Global] 

Esther Dyson is a technology pundit, who sees a future for business in which the more people you connect and interact with, the better you do. [Fortune] 

Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of 'crackpot' than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost. — Thomas J. Watson 

The argument usually goes like this: Science can lead to dangerous places. Clearly, there are moral issues with cloning. The government must stop cloning research (and throw scientists in jail if necessary) until these issues have been resolved. Here is a reasonable answer: The fact that there may be moral issues associated with cloning--or any other field--does not constitute sufficient reason to ban it. Think about it. ... One can raise moral concerns about virtually any human endeavor. By your logic, we should stop it all. Stop science, stop technology, stop progress--until the moral issues are "resolved." But resolved by whom? And when? And by what standard? And what makes [any government entity] a superior judge of moral issues? And what happened to freedom? [no permalink, The Objective American Daily]