4.4.1 The World Wide Web as an example of internet-enabled disruptive innovation

Most great technological innovations are made over substantial periods of time by large groups of individuals. The striking aspects of the Web are that:

• it was created in a very short time by a small group of individuals in which one person played a dominant role;

• it was invented by taking earlier ideas about hypertext, which were freely available, and building on them; and

• once invented, it was disseminated freely and with astonishing rapidity via the internet.

It that sense, the Web is an excellent example of Lessig's argument about how the internet-as-commons enables innovation.