Open Innovation #1 : What If Innovation Didn't Need Secrets?

Me: Why is every company building its own AI model?

ChatGPT: Because each company wants to protect its data, its algorithm, its “edge.” It's about owning the secret sauce.

Me: But the cost is enormous. We’re duplicating massive infrastructures, wasting electricity, burning GPUs… just to keep things private?

ChatGPT: Exactly. It’s innovation fueled by secrecy, not sustainability.

Me: What if we flipped that? What if technologies could be shared—but creators still got paid? Not just with praise, but with actual income?

ChatGPT: Then maybe we could slow down the arms race. And build something that benefits more than just shareholders.

Why I'm Writing This

That conversation didn’t end there.

It became a question I couldn’t stop thinking about:

“What if technology could be treated like an economic asset,

but not a private one?”

“What if innovation could be open, collaborative, and still rewarding?”

This isn’t a technical problem.

It’s a systemic one.

And systemic problems need systemic solutions.

I’m starting this blog series not just to propose one idea,

but to create a space for collective thinking.

Because this isn’t something one startup or one engineer can solve.

It will require a shift in how we think about value, ownership, and collaboration—

Across governments, corporations, developers, legal systems, and individuals.

The Cost of Secrecy

Let’s be clear:

I’m not against innovation.

I’m against wasteful duplication driven by artificial barriers.

Right now, every company is building its own LLM.

Each with its own hardware stack, data pipelines, and fine-tuned “trade secrets.”

But underneath? They’re often more similar than different.

This leads to:

Redundant infrastructure
Exploding energy usage
Accelerated chip consumption
Locked-up knowledge
And a shrinking number of people who control it all

Meanwhile, we’re approaching climate and energy thresholds that demand smarter use of our resources.

🧠 Historical Successes of Open Innovation

The idea of treating technology as shared infrastructure isn’t entirely new. In fact, the open source software movement has already shown how collaboration can outperform secrecy in many domains.

Consider Linux, a community-built operating system now powering everything from phones to supercomputers. Or Apache, the web server that helped shape the early internet. And PyTorch, Meta’s open-source deep learning framework, which has become a default for modern AI research.

These technologies thrived not in spite of being open—but because of it.

Global contributors could audit, improve, and adapt them
Companies built products on top without reinventing the wheel
Talent naturally gravitated toward open, evolving ecosystems

So we ask:

If openness worked so well in software, why stop there?

Of course, not all technologies are so easily shared. Hardware innovation faces different challenges—physical manufacturing, proprietary materials, and safety-critical use cases. But even here, we’re seeing promising shifts:

The RISC-V project is creating an open CPU architecture, challenging traditional chip IP monopolies.
The Open Compute Project (OCP) by Meta shares energy-efficient server designs across the industry.

These are early signs of a possible open hardware future.

🔍 Open R&D in hardware is far more complex—but also deeply worth exploring.

We’ll dedicate a future post to this frontier, as it may hold the key to unlocking sustainable, scalable innovation at the physical layer.

So What Am I Proposing?

I’ll explore this in more depth in upcoming posts, but here’s the core idea:

What if technologies were openly available, like public infrastructure?
What if their usage was tracked, and value automatically flowed back to the people who helped build them?
What if this model could replace IP hoarding with shared innovation and recurring rewards?

Not in theory.

But through real mechanisms: shared protocols, distributed attribution, and fair economic models.

Why Now?

Because AI is growing faster than we are adapting.

And if we don’t redesign the incentive systems behind innovation,

we’re going to build ourselves into an ecological and social dead-end.

We need more than open-source.

We need open economies of knowledge—where the best ideas rise,

not because they are locked away,

but because they are trusted, verified, shared, and sustained.

Let's Talk About This Together

This blog is an invitation.

Not just to read,

but to think together,

and maybe even build together.

What’s the best way to reward open innovation?

How do we prevent abuse, freeloading, or unfair concentration?

How do we shift legal and economic norms toward this model?

I don’t pretend to have all the answers.

But I believe the right questions are finally emerging.

And I believe the people who care are out there.

So let’s start the conversation.

— Seungho