Take The New York Times, which gives away nearly all of the daily newspaper online. Now much of what you consider proprietary, like designs, customer lists, and market intelligence, is readily available in reusable digital form. In any case, your proprietary data has a greatly reduced time value. Organizations often overvalue secrecy and underestimate the value of sharing data instead. Those which take proprietary information often return it in more valuable condition.
Time works against today's organizations.
Tomorrow's customers, competitors and business partners, raised on digital technology in everything from toys to schools, will demand commercial relationships that are technology-driven. Moreover, their attention span for new goods and services is measured in Internet years, making them far more fickle than earlier generations. All the more reason to hire these same members of Generation X and Y as product designers, customer service providers, and business managers. Companies can learn the needs of the next generation by hiring them. And more to the point, these employees can help companies create the next generations of their organizations.