Lobel believes talent must be free to flourish. She compares the old way of establishing controls and boundaries to the creative playfulness of artistic talents and explores the psychology of creativity through the ages. She proposes a willingness to “go with the flow” – to see chaos as a challenge to create the new, and to use creative destruction as a tool. She explores the realm of ideas, psychology and human behavior and questions the legal systems that restrict and obstruct.
As an advocate for talents to be free, Lobel reminds us that our own peculiar systems of protection may be outdated in a global environment that plays by different rules.
I would recommend the book to those who have a serious interest in understanding how technological and global legal cultural change is impacting our ability to compete. The book is well worth reading, but is academic with long paragraphs and many footnotes. It is rather jumbled with a lot of information and would be easier and more useful if broken into several smaller books – perhaps as a series.
I recommend this book to senior managers, entrepreneurs, policy makers, and most importantly, anyone interested in macroeconomics and development. Attorneys may actually find the book entertaining since it has many interesting arguments on what the author sees as needed change in our legal systems that now serve to protect intellectual property.
Lucia Worthington teaches business management at Clark College and strategic entrepreneurship at Portland State University. To recommend a book for review, email bookreviews@vbjusa.com.
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