Cameron: The devaluation of new ideas
From Dave Cameron at FanGraphs on February 7, 2017:
Over at The Ringer yesterday, Ben Lindbergh wrote a fantastic piece on what MLB teams are doing to protect their intellectual property in the wake of the Astros’ hacking scandal. But while Ryan Pollock tackled the question of how an organization might protect itself from malevolent outside intrusions, Lindbergh’s piece focused on what teams are doing about the inevitable transfer of their ideas that come from the relatively free movement of front office employees and the increasing availability of qualify data in the public sphere.
If you’ve been paying attention to the types of posts that have gone up on InstaGraphs over the winter, you’ve noticed all the job postings; MLB teams are greatly expanding their research and development departments, and because front office employees mostly don’t sign long-term contracts, a good number of these positions are filled by people who were already working for another club in some capacity. Interns move into analyst roles, analysts become managers, and managers can switch organizations to land director jobs. And this cross-pollination of employees means that ideas are difficult to keep internal, since you can’t force someone to unlearn the processes that were valued by their former employer.
Read the full article here: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-devaluation-of-new-ideas/
Originally published: February 7, 2017. Last Updated: February 7, 2017.