The blog as a tool for sharing information

What matters more, the information itself or what you do with it?

The technical blog is certainly a phenomenon of recent years. At many companies, blogging has become part of the internal culture. It can help people use information effectively, but it can also expose a company to a competitive disadvantage. Where is the line? Anyone who decides to share information has to grapple with these questions sooner or later.

How do you generally share knowledge with
the outside world? Have you found a simple rule for deciding what to publish
and what to keep to yourself? From a company’s point of view, some published articles could
be considered unpublishable because this very kind
of information might confer a competitive advantage. Where do you draw the line
between what can be published and what can’t?

The simplest rule is to keep information private if it isn’t widely known. But is there anything left that isn’t known? How you apply information matters much more than the information itself, and that should stay inside the company. If I write about designing an application architecture without revealing how a particular company does it, publishing the information doesn’t compromise anyone.

The analogy is software patents and copyright. A software patent protects the information itself in full. Copyright protects what you do with the information, while the underlying information remains available. In this sense, some information is exclusive. Then it comes down to the individual’s judgment and conscience.

From the global community’s point of view, developers stick
together, but those ties can never be very close if
their companies compete on products, knowledge bases,
internal processes and so on.

I think that’s wrong, at least in software. With rare exceptions, the real competition is in applying information. That’s borne out in practice. Relatively little information is secret by its nature. Companies differ in how effectively they use and apply it.

Simply possessing information guarantees you nothing in a global market. The competitive advantage is knowing how to apply it. That’s the know-how a company should protect and keep private.

If I owned a company, I’d encourage employees to publish their opinions based on public information, whether or not the company uses it. When I put my view out in public, others can challenge it. That gives me feedback I can use to apply the same information more effectively.

Does all the information held by every employee belong exclusively to their employer?