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

This story begins a larger narrative about how markets renew themselves with new ideas that run contrary to assumed wisdom. Did the NSF intend to renew the market? No, that was not the direct intent of its funding. However, the flexibility of their funding process helped indirectly, because it raised the chances that the research would be relevant. In the end, society benefited from that flexibility.