Re: Theft of information

[enilsson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Eric Nilsson)]

Michael Perelman writes --

>When information is held within a firm, it may reside in the heads of
>a number of people.  Hiring away an individual may be sufficient to threaten
>to obtain information.  With a contingent labor force -- even on the
>executive level -- protection of information is difficult.
>
>Remember theIBM woman who was fired for dating somebody from a rival firm.

Very true.  But Nelson and Wright in a 1992 JEL article (Rise and Fall of
American Technological Leadership) argue that the stealing of information
from a firm is often more difficult than stealing one or more workers.  They
argue that non-codifiable information (residing "within an organization" or
team) can't be taken so easily.  Such a point was also made by Geoff Hodgson
in a Cambridge Journal of Economics article a few years ago.  While Hodgson,
as I remember, had a good discussion of such things, N and W don't cite him.

Still, this does not imply that the stealing of particular individuals can't
be a very good way to get some information that is profitable to particular
firms.  Nelson and Wright and Hodgson use their ideas in the context of the
long-lasting advantage a particular nation can have over other nations (even
when migration happens and individuals move between nations).

Eric Nilsson
Department of Economics
California State University, San Bernardino
enilsson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
909-880-5564