Open Knowledge promotes fast, creative innovation across sectors

"'Open knowledge' is the power to promote fast, creative innovation by allowing an idea to leave your hands. Essentially, something is 'open' if anyone is free to use, reuse and redistribute it. It should only be subject to the requirement to attribute the author, if even that. Knowledge Exchange is exploring the rich field of open knowledge in order to help its partners effectively achieve their objectives. To this end, scoping sessions took place with experts which revealed strong views on the value of making knowledge open and steps which need to be taken to achieve this. These views are collected in the Knowledge Exchange discussion paper on Open Knowledge. Mechanisms of open creation offer opportunities to work and exchange with other sectors - research, cultural heritage and government. To make true use of this collaboration an increase of openness is required, to create better proposals and solutions. We simply cannot afford to not open up, we need an open approach to tackle the challenges facing us. Though we may be easily persuaded about the benefits of open, the practice is different. People still hold knowledge to themselves or want to make money from knowledge. The current competitive environment encourages researchers and employees to seek protection against the theft of their ideas, which they do by locking down work behind patents and intellectual property rights. We need to enforce openness as there are not sufficient incentives at present. The experts agreed to not just go out making plans or spend time convincing yourself that open is good. Get out and about and show new things to others - convince them there's another way, according to the experts. The paper closes with suggestions for actions to take when publishing or funding content ..."