the question for me is, why is it so much more important today to point
out that development is
never done by one single individuum but is a process that includes a lot
of people adding and
evaluating thousands of tiny and comprehensive steps?
While this seems to be common sense and only logical for us developers and users of open source software, it is not so much for economists and old-style companies producing traditional goods or services. I had to learn this (to my own surprise) when i got to know more people in this field. The researchers in fields of open and distributed innovation are very interested in the mechanisms of OS development and the incentives of the developers to transfer them to traditional markets. It makes little sense when i try to write about that, but more to read the original literature, e.g. the best-selling "democratizing innovation" ( http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/democ1.htm ). It might be interesting to know that the LEGO company of Denmark survived because of overcoming old marketing schemes and actively supporting user/open innovation strategies (with the LEGO mindstorm community).
gr~~~