Book: Spark Employee Creativity Through Less Control Of Ideas

A new book argues that the conventional business approach to increasing control over employees and the talents they carry out actually stifles their creativity and inventiveness.

A new set of attitudes on human capital, knowledge and skill focusing on mobility, relationship and motivation would inevitably incentivize talent flow, creativity, and economic growth as a whole, it says.

This research, explored by Professor Orly Lobel at University of San Diego in “Talent Wants to Be Free: Why We Should Learn to Love Leaks, Raids, and Free-Riding,” was presented last month at Yale University.

Today’s global economy is characterised by a war for talent, described as an increasingly competitive environment for recruiting and retaining talented workers through various tactics – such as harsh non-compete contracts, trade secrets and non-disclosure agreements, prohibitions on poaching co-workers and customers, preclusion of employee ownership of patents and copyright.

But this, according to Lobel, is ultimately counter-productive for the innovative spirit in various sectors.

“Many companies get caught up in counter-productive battles, regions stagnate and experience brain drain, inventors become demotivated and abandon great ideas,” she told Intellectual Property Watch.

On the basis of an original research into motivating creativity, analysis of recent litigation, and empirical data from economics, psychology, and network science, Lobel suggests a new paradigm for managing people and their ideas. This is by identifying knowledge flows, strong networks, cross-fertilization, incentive design, a long-term view of competition and collaboration, sustainable motivation and drive as the essential components.

However, of course “there is a need to protect certain kinds of intangible assets,” she told Intellectual Property Watch. “But the important thing for businesses and policymakers is to draw smart responsible boundaries between knowledge, skills and relations which are protected and owned and those that should be set free.”

More broadly, her set of positive changes touches on corporate strategies, industry norms, regional policies, and national laws, bringing a contribution of new interdisciplinary empirical research to the field.

The book is published by Yale University Press, available for purchase here.