This essay first appeared for Premium members on 3 November 2019.
How should we manage our innovation? In a field like medicine, we’ve established a rigorous and scientifically-validated approach to testing and approving drugs, based on clinical trials and randomised controlled tests. In the finance and insurance industries, new entrants must comply with strict rules that protect the consumer. Capital adequacy and anti-money laundering requirements ensure the integrity of the financial system, supposedly. Â
The tech industry has had no such framework. It has enjoyed ‘permissionless innovation’ since the advent of the Internet fifty years ago, this week. The open platform enabled entrepreneurs to try new things without getting permission from regulators or, indeed, anyone else.
This is why we got streaming audio in the mid-nineties, while the traditional broadcast industry remained heavily regulated. And why we’ve had a flourishing ecology of remarkably large products like Skype or Wikip…