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Stop Trying to Control How Ex-Employees Use Their Knowledge

Harvard Business Review

The free flow of workers between companies is central to economic growth and innovation. Yet employers are increasingly taking legal action to prevent former employees from using knowledge and skills learned on the job. Employees’ incentives to learn on the job are weaker if they cannot use that knowledge later in their careers.

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What U2 and the US Navy Have in Common: Connecting with Core Employees

Michael Lee Stallard

In addition to the negative impact on decision-making, diminished communications from the lack of connection reduces the marketplace of ideas inside the organization, which in turn reduces innovation. Admiral Clark’s description of who sailors are as members of the U.S. One such system was the Navy’s job assignment process.

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How to Prevent Experts from Hoarding Knowledge

Harvard Business Review

They may be technical, as in the engineering example, but they can also be managerial, as when an experienced manager has hard-earned skills in problem identification and solution, crucial relationships with customers, or a detailed understanding of how to innovate. If such knowledge leaves with retirees, it may be lost for good.

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Look Beyond Your "Social Media Presence"

Harvard Business Review

It's in areas of the company such as knowledge management, innovation, communication, and better integration with the supply chain. For example, if you make crowdsourced innovation a core capability, you have to integrate it with marketing functions that take care of customers. But that's a good thing.

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Research: Why Best Practices Don’t Translate Across Cultures

Harvard Business Review

A large high-technology company had established an innovation center in one of their U.S. Sara Vaerlander, Bobbi Thomason, Brandi Pearce, Heather Altman, and I observed what happened after the innovation practices were shared with the company’s Indian and Chinese counterparts. It made sense. Leaders from the U.S. Pamela Hinds.

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Social Capital Is as Important as Financial Capital in Health Care

Harvard Business Review

Follow the Leading Health Care Innovation insight center on Twitter @HBRhealth. Leading Health Care Innovation. Ultimately, the key to success is authenticity. Though social-capital building can be nurtured, it can’t be mandated. Our more detailed paper provides a framework organizations can use to begin building their social capital.

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Make Your Knowledge Workers More Productive

Harvard Business Review

Yet here is the challenge you face as a senior executive: You cannot manage your knowledge workers in the traditional and intrusive way you might have done with manual workers. Knowledge workers own the means of production — their brains. Knowledge management Managing people Productivity'