Bringing in outside experts helps drive innovation for firms—but it can also mean stolen ideas and appropriated knowledge, suggests research by Jan Heide featured in Harvard Business Review (HBR).
Heide, the Michael E. Lehman Distinguished Chair in Business and a professor of marketing at the Wisconsin School of Business, and his co-authors looked at the issue of “information leakage” through numerous interviews, surveys, and industry-supplied data. Heide and his team conducted a large-scale survey of 230 construction firms, revealing that 79% of the firms feared that project partners might appropriate proprietary information without permission. A follow-up survey across five industries showed similar concerns: approximately 75% of participants were “somewhat to extremely concerned about leakage risks,” the survey noted.
“Doing something that hasn’t been done before—for example, building the Sydney Opera House—calls for capabilities that don’t exist within a single firm. At the same time, our research also shows that drawing on external experts possesses a ‘dark side’ in the form of leakage risk,” Heide and his co-authors state.
Heide also sets out a three-step process to help firms minimize the risk of information leakage.
Read the full story in HBR to discover how firms can protect themselves from consultant espionage.
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