Privacy

Two things today made me think about how much we need to hide or show of innovations: my openly publishing the company's innovations processes across the whole company, and a private facebook comment that I wrote (in response to a friend's frustration) being reported to, and put on my file by, the company.

There are some obvious things that should be hidden: ideas that attract a high security classification, and ideas that are unprotected by innovations disclosures or patents, but on the whole there seems little else that would not be beneficial to an innovations scheme if it were openly available. Which ideas exist, who had them, comments on them, what got funded: the publication of all these can only help to create a culture of openness and psychological safety (apparently one of the greatest measures of the innovativeness of a company) across a company. Sadly, not all companies believe in fostering psychological safety, but we persist. We persist.