What’s mine to take and sell? Ethical concerns for knowledge-based startups
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What’s mine to take and sell? Ethical concerns for knowledge-based startups
Wed, 14/02/2018 - 16:00 to 17:00
Location:
Speaker:
Katharina Zilles
Affiliation:
Ruhr University Bochum
Synopsis:
Entrepreneurship is a budding concept in policy making and in higher education, and has made its way into the departments of engineering. In recent years, attention has been shifted somewhat from physical goods and their applications towards innovation in intangible goods and digital markets. These technological and cultural changes have brought about new ethical challenges, such as questions of ownership and copyright.
We will look at some examples of business ideas that are based on privatizing collective knowledge, and discuss what arguments can be found to critique or defend them. Our aim is to come up with useful questions for evaluating business models with regard to their ethical implications.
Biography:
Katharina Zilles works in engineering education at Ruhr University Bochum. She is particularly interested in critical entrepreneurship education, transdisciplinary classrooms, and diversity and gender issues in the engineering profession. Before joining the department of mechanical engineering in Bochum, she completed a master’s in cultural studies and worked for several years in the administration of interdisciplinary postgraduate programmes.