Ideas are free: examining intellectual property and value creation

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In the increasingly competitive global economy of today, organizations are struggling to find significant competitive advantages that will enable them to offer the customer far higher value, through either a superior product or lower prices. In fact, it is widely known that businesses in most industries are currently being compelled to try and achieve both in the race to attract new customers while retaining old ones. The situation is made further problematic by the need to reduce operational costs in order to stay profitable: "...and before we are finished, we have to start looking for the next big cost-cutting idea. " (Robinson & Schroeder, p. 13) In their quest to seek solutions, most organizations either look to their managers or to outside consultants for "big ideas" that will enable them to build long-term sustainable advantages, losing sight of the fact that historically "big ideas" have always been few and far between.

Instead, if a company focused on implementing many small ideas, it could lead to great attention to detail, which could result in improved operational efficiencies as well as many value additions to a product or service. Such an approach, however, entails a company encouraging its line-workers to generate ideas since these are the people who are likely to be far more familiar with operational details and realities. Indeed, Robinson & Schroeder cite many examples of companies such as Grapevine Canyon Ranch, which have successfully managed to attain exceptionally high levels of productivity and customer satisfaction (p.33), through using ideas generated from all its employees. In fact, an organization that wishes to achieve operational excellence must necessarily turn to its workers, and not its managers, for as stated earlier, each worker is an expert on her or his aspect of the job. In any case, developing "big ideas" and excellence in detail are not mutually exclusive.