Eric von Hippel

A French chef whose restaurant is given an extra “star” in the famed Michelin Guide (on a scale of 1 to 5) can expect a flurry of new patrons, prestige and profits in the coming year. Similarly, restaurants that “lose” a star can see sales drop as much as 50%. Since there is so much money riding on the quality of food served in top French restaurants, why aren’t the recipes and food preparation techniques used by great French chefs protected by copyrights, patents or trade secret law? The answer, as explored in a fascinating paper by Emmanuelle Fauchart and Eric von Hippel, is that the social norms of the culinary professionals are a more effective tool for protecting the “proprietary” interests of top-flight chefs. The commons is the governance regime of choice for protecting the value of great French food.

Von Hippel is the MIT professor who has long studied user-driven innovation, most recently in his book, Democratizing Innovation. (See my earlier post on this book.) Fauchart teaches at the Conservatoire des Arts and Metiers, in Paris. After sending out a detailed questionnaire to 485 French chefs who had been given some form of recognition by the Michelin Guide, Fauchart and von Hippel studied the 104 responses and conducted ten in-person interviews. In their paper, “Norms-based Intellectual Property Systems: The Case of French Chefs,” the researchers identified three strong social norms that assure that the culinary commons works effectively.… (meer)