Many enterprises favour permanent employment over consulting or contracting engagement under the mistaken belief that they will better retain intellectual property. The reality is that the difference between employees and contractors is simply terms of engagement; and with respect to intellectual property, while the issues for employers are actually similar, access to knowledge and skills vested in individuals is more likely to be permanently lost once they leave an employment arrangement.

I believe what enterprises really intend and need is to ensure their collective endeavors preserve institutional knowledge for future use. This is actually more difficult than defining property rights over intangible and elusive intellectual assets. Conservation of institutional knowledge requires the establishment of a memory represented in rules, procedures, systems, beliefs and culture, that survives individuals. Whether it is a practice of post-implementation reviews, documenting business rules, or deploying formal content or digital asset management technologies, investment in the enterprise memory will enable lessons learned (at great expense) through the development or projects of companies to be built upon and not re-learned by a new team at new time or location. A wise company knows the the true cost of losing people can be far higher than the obvious expenses.