Intellectual Property and Blogs

Dear employer:

As I realize you will soon be reading these posts, I would like to justify my actions by explaining how is it that the mere act of maintaining an active Blog can be good for business. First of all let me state the obvious: some of the ideas presented here may be valuable to the organization (otherwise you would not be reading through this). Now let me state the not so obvious: if it wasn't for this blog, you wouldn't have come across them, therefore such value would've been lost in the blogosphere. Before proceeding to the final verdict, allow me to ask the key question: who owns the ideas represented here?

In order to support the decision making process, I would like to present some supporting documentation:

• "People own ideas" illustrates a very plausible scenario where there are no copyright restrictions to ideas and remix is generally an accepted practice.


• "The Creators own ideas" is basically the answer from the corporate world in which the argument of "good for the economy" is used to defend current copyright practices.


• "Group rethink" presents a visionary look at the future of corporations in its review of four articles on Collective Intelligence


• Others have found ways to deal with Corporate Blogging and have even discovered it has helped their organizations be more competitive

I realize the issues that a blog like this one may bring to an organization like ours, worrying executives that any of the ideas here may jeopardize our ability to compete by disclosing too much information about ongoing projects our future activities, but let's face it: none of our competitors would be foolish to trust an unofficial source to steer their own business plan. Additionally I would avoid discussing any matters that may be directly related to any of our real projects.

In conclusion, consider the following analogy: just like the academy works years ahead of the industry investigating and writing about topics that nobody understands, the true entrepreneur is capable of seeing a good idea and taking it to completion. Just as well, I can only hope that some of the posts here serve their purpose as awakening calls for the true visionary.