Earlier this week, I was at SXSW for CTA's annual Innovation Policy Day. My session, on Labor and the Gig/Sharing Economy, was a lively discussion including Sarah Leberstein from the National Employment Law Project, Michael Hayes from CTA's policy group (which reps companies from their membership including Uber and Handy), and Arun Sundararajan from NYU, who recently wrote a book on the Sharing Economy. But, that's not the point of this post!  The point of this post is to discuss an idea that came up and a subsequent session, on Security & Privacy and the Internet of Things.  The idea that struck me the most from that session was the tension -- or depending on how you look at it, codependence -- between the "freedom to innovate" and the "freedom to investigate". Defending the Freedom to Innovate was the Mercatus Center's Adam Thierer. Adam is one of the most thoughtful folks looking at innovation from a libertarian perspective, and is the author of a book on the subject of permissionless innovation.  The gist of permissionless innovation is that we -- as a society and as a market -- need the ability to experiment.  To try new things freely, make mistakes, take risks, and -- most importantly -- learn from the entire process.  Therefore, as a general rule, policy should bias towards allowing experimentation, rather than prescribing fixed rules.  This is the foundation of what i call

Earlier this week, I was at SXSW for CTA's annual Innovation Policy Day. My session, on Labor and the Gig/Sharing Economy, was a lively discussion including Sarah Leberstein from the National Employment Law Project, Michael Hayes from CTA's policy group (which reps companies from their membership including Uber and Handy), and Arun Sundararajan from NYU, who recently wrote a book on the Sharing Economy. But, that's not the point of this post!  The point of this post is to discuss an idea that came up and a subsequent session, on Security & Privacy and the Internet of Things.  The idea that struck me the most from that session was the tension -- or depending on how you look at it, codependence -- between the "freedom to innovate" and the "freedom to investigate". Defending the Freedom to Innovate was the Mercatus Center's Adam Thierer. Adam is one of the most thoughtful folks looking at innovation from a libertarian perspective, and is the author of a book on the subject of permissionless innovation.  The gist of permissionless innovation is that we -- as a society and as a market -- need the ability to experiment.  To try new things freely, make mistakes, take risks, and -- most importantly -- learn from the entire process.  Therefore, as a general rule, policy should bias towards allowing experimentation, rather than prescribing fixed rules.  This is the foundation of what i call