Careers over Jobs

There is a recent book I loved "An Intelligent Career: Taking Ownership of your Work and Your Life" by Michael Arthur, Svetlana Khapova and Julia Richardson. It's about how to make the most of the inevitable changes of technologies, globalization of professional networks, and new patterns of employment. Over the weekend, one of the book's coauthors Michael Arthur, a business school professor in Massachusetts, wrote this is insightful article in Forbes. It discusses the new law in Massachusetts that limits the reach of non-competes. Arthur describes this reform as a win for investors and innovation, not just workers. He draws on the works of Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom, Information Scholar Annalee Saxenian, and my work on non-competes. here is an excerpt from the Forbes article: 

Does your talent want to be free?

The heading above borrows from the title of University of San Diego Professor Orly Lobel’s book Talent Wants to be Free. Her subtitle goes on to assert “why we should love leaks, raids, and free riding.” Her fundamental point is that financial investment in innovation creates human capital investment, and increases the overall talent in an economic system. In turn, your choice of where to invest your own talent contributes to the effectiveness of that system. Any attempt to protect single organizations, with particular axes to grind, fades in comparison to the aggregate benefits to the system as a whole.

All three of Saxenian, Ostrom and Lobel point the way toward a more communicative and innovative world driven by your and other people's career ownership. Are you playing, or can you play, your part?

An Intelligent Career definitely enriched my thinking as an employment law scholar and I am glad to see changes happening on the ground in Massachusetts.