Information is not taken seriously. Much is said about the information age, the information economy, the information society, and particularly about information technology, but little about information itself. Information is not as other good: it has some very odd characteristics, conveniently overlooked by senior managers passionate about knowledge-based, learning organizations; by politicians and public servants, compensating with policy and programme for the information failure of organizationa and market; and by the IT and dotcom communities, bent on adding value to what they treat as just a commodity.

This book looks at innovation from an information perspective; one that puts information first. Its information perspective is applied to eighteenth-century agriculture and high technology, to technology transfer and espionage, to corporate strategy and intellectual property. The results are intriguing.