[FYI] Scott McNealy (SUN): "Do We Worry Too Much About Protecting Intellectual Property?"

[Kristian Köhntopp <kk@shonline.de>]

http://www.cadence.com/features/vol3No3/mc_nealy

Do We Worry Too Much About Protecting IP? 

By Scott McNealy 


It seems as if everyone’s always worried about intellectual 
property, or IP. We worry about its proprietary nature and how to
protect it. But let’s take a different angle on IP and also 
intellectual capital inside a company, because I think we 
all worry way too much about protecting it. 

IP has the shelf life of a banana. It just doesn’t last, yet 
we’re all worried about protecting it, hiding it, securing it, 
storing it in a vault. As a result, we absolutely prevent our
competitors from getting ahold of it, but we also prevent our
employees from getting ahold of it. We prevent our customers 
— and our suppliers and our partners — from getting access to 
it. As a result, by the time the people who need access to it 
get that access, it’s so old that it is effectively a banana 
we wouldn’t want to eat. 

[...]

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