How the Internet Became Commercial: Innovation, Privatization, and the Birth of a New Network (The Kauffman Foundation Series on Innovation and Entrepreneurship)

by Shane Greenstein

Economic experiments in the marketplace generated valuable lessons about coinvention. The privatization of the Internet motivated a number of ISPs to experiment with developing the access business and applying it to new areas and unserved applications, an observation central to chapters 5 and 8. The deployment of the browser-based World Wide Web motivated a number of programmers and entrepreneurs to start new firms that applied the browser in new applications, an observation central to chapter 9. The actions of entrepreneurs collectively amounted to a large economic experiment in learning how to adapt the Internet to user needs in a variety of locations and commercial settings. As chapter 10 observed, established firms also incurred coinvention expenses as they adapted the Internet to their business needs.