ABSTRACT
This chapter elaborates on contemporary capitalism as dominated by intellectual monopolies, understood as corporations that base their accumulation on continuously monopolizing access to knowledge. Innovation is embedded in power relationships. Intellectual monopolies exercise their power both during the innovation process and by using the accomplished innovation to subordinate others. Continuous innovations introduced by intellectual monopolies result in a sustained technological and economic dependency of other firms participating in their outsourced production networks and operating in their platforms. Intellectual monopolies also subordinate and exercise knowledge predation from the organizations participating in their innovation processes, organizing innovation circuits or innovation networks, according to their degree of institutionalization. Intellectual monopolies collect their own intangibles’ intellectual rents and also garner rents from turning knowledge produced in their innovation circuits and networks into intangible assets. The chapter then introduces a taxonomy of subordinate firms and finishes by delving into intellectual monopolies’ sources of profit.
