Innovation Policy Colloquium

Professors Michal Shur-Ofry and Katherine Strandburg
Spring 2026
Thursdays 4:45-6:45pm Vanderbilt Hall, Room 208

LW.10930
3 credits

The Innovation Policy Colloquium focuses each year on different aspects of the law’s role in promoting creativity, invention, and new technology. This year, we will discuss the the implications of complexity for law and policy related to innovation, privacy and AI. Complexity science is a cutting-edge multi-disciplinary field that studies a wide variety of systems comprised of numerous interacting components. The human social network, the internet, social media applications, cities, biological systems and financial networks are all examples of complex systems. Complexity can lead to non-linear and surprising responses to policy initiatives, such as tipping points and feedback effects. Policymaking that is insensitive to these possibilities can go drastically awry.

Schedule of Presenters

Thursday, FEBRUARY 5
Albert-László Barabási, Director, CCNR/The Lab: The Center for Complex Network Research
Network Science as a Falsifiable Discipline: From Graphs to Testable Laws

Thursday, FEBRUARY 12
Mark McKenna, Vice Dean of Faculty & Intellectual Life; Professor of Law; Faculty Co-Director, UCLA Institute for Technology, Law & Policy, UCLA School of Law
Woodrow Hartzog, Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law
Taking Scale Seriously in Technology Law

Abstract: Issues of scale—the relationship between the amount of an activity and its associated costs and benefits—permeate discussions around law and technologies. Indeed, it’s not much of an exaggeration to say that scale is the reason for most technology regulation. But it’s not always clear how lawmakers and judges conceptualize “scale” when approaching questions around automated technologies. Scale is often used intuitively, just to mean “more.” But scale is not always just about more—scale can introduce new harms and benefits along different dimensions, not simply costs or efficiencies of greater magnitude. In this Article, we argue for a more sustained interrogation of the role of scale in law, one that is more sensitive to the distinction between what we describe as “scale is more” and “scale is different.” When lawmakers and judges fail to properly categorize the role of scale in a particular context, they risk ignoring or misidentifying harms, misdiagnosing the causes of those harms, and potentially focusing on the wrong policy tools, and even the wrong actors, in proposing solutions.

Thursday, FEBRUARY 19 
Andrew Torrance, Associate Dean of Graduate and International Law; Paul E. Wilson Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Kansas School of Law
How Innovation Hypercycles Trigger Technology and Power Prosperity

Abstract: Unlike other kinds of animals, which repetitively innovate without sustained progress, humans have accomplished cumulative innovation. Throughout human history technological innovation has played a key role in advancing welfare and progress by expanding the production possibilities frontier. Once capital and labor inputs are exhausted, economic growth derives from technological innovation. In the long run, technological innovation tends to occur at a moderate pace. However, every once and a while, when conditions are right, a period of explosive technological advancement arises, creating an “innovation hypercycle”. Hypercycles are cycles whose component parts are themselves cycles (that is, cycles of cycles). First discovered in chemistry, then in biology, innovation hypercycles also give rise to “hot spots” of rapid technological growth. These hypercycles are fueled by the replication of ideas, applications of those ideas, growth in human wealth and welfare, and increases in the talent pool, leading to yet more ideas, and repeating the cycle. When driven by an innovation hypercycle, technological growth accelerates rapidly. Several factors are crucial to the success of innovation hypercycles. They may be combined into the backronym “FORWARD”, which stands for freedom, openness, restlessness, wonderlust, audacity, rationality, and democracy. These factors include open-mindedness, contestability of ideas, widespread education, freedom of thought and speech, free trade in goods, services, and ideas, and an outlook focused on the future. Innovation hypercycles may be poisoned into decline or destruction by such contrasting values as closed-mindedness, orthodoxy, dogmatic reliance on received wisdom, ignorance, censorship, autocracy, barriers to trade, and a backwards and past-worshiping orientation. Intellectual property and regulation, while potentially beneficial, can also hinder innovation, if misapplied, creating barriers rather than opportunities. Discussed are grand innovation hypercycles ancient Sumeria, classical Greece, Song Dynasty China, and the Industrial Revolution, local innovation hypercycles Renaissance Florence, Silicon Valley, and Kendall Square, institutional innovation hypercycles the School of Alexandria, the House of Wisdom, and the Cavendish Laboratory, and purposive innovation hypercycles the Manhattan Project and the Human Genome Project. Innovation hypercycles are rare and delicate phenomena that require careful nurturing and protection to sustain. By understanding and wisely managing the factors that influence innovation hypercycles, society can generate and sustain technology hot spots that yield spectacular rates of innovation and enormous attendant social welfare gains.

Thursday, FEBRUARY 26
Michal Shur-Ofry, Adjunct Professor of Law, NYU School of Law Spring 2026; Associate Professor, The Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Scaling Ostrom: Diffusion Patterns of Institutions for Collective Action

Abstract: Informal institutions for collective action (ICAs) are bottom-up collaborations through which communities address shared challenges. Economist Elinor Ostrom famously identified ICAs as a potential solution to collective action problems, alongside the traditional approaches of top-down regulation and privatization.  Yet, ICAs are often regarded as limited solutions to macro-level problems due to their inherently local scale. We challenge this view by demonstrating that ICAs can scale through self-organized diffusion, following predictable patterns observed in complex systems. Analyzing four case studies—food co-ops, community gardens, collaborative Holocaust commemoration events, and Pride parades—we find that ICA diffusion exhibits exponential temporal growth fitting the Bass diffusion model, and spatial clustering patterns, providing empirical evidence of social contagion among ICAs. Such "scaling through contagion" allows ICAs to maintain adaptability to local context while generating macro-level impact. The complex systems perspective we apply reveals that ICAs’ potential as policy tools for addressing macro-scale collective action challenges is more significant than previously recognized. We discuss how policymakers can leverage these predictable diffusion dynamics through strategic, low-cost interventions that we term “self-expanding nudges” to steer and amplify grassroots solutions and more effectively address societal challenges.

Thursday, MARCH 5
Michal Gal, Professor and Director of the Center for Law and Technology, Faculty of Law, University of Haifa
Dr. Raz Agranat, Assistant Professor of Law, Radzyner Law School, Reichman University
Hub Power and Hub(uses): Power Dynamics in Platform Ecosystems

Thursday, MARCH 12
Feng Fu, Associate Professor, Dartmouth College

Questions about the Colloquium should be addressed to Nicole Arzt. For those interested in attending any of the talks without an NYU ID need to RSVP to Nicole Arzt.