Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/161013
from the editors Competition and Collaboration follow us on twitter @BizEdmag! 6 September/October 2013 BizEd iStockphoto/Th i n kstock Raqu ita H e n de rson T here's a new verb in the tech field: acq-hire. It refers to what happens when a behemoth like Facebook or Microsoft buys an entire startup company, then dumps the product, retaining only the engineers and software geniuses. Orly Lobel writes about this phenomenon in the book Talent Wants to Be Free—and she's hardly a fan. The University of San Diego professor doesn't believe a company should try to own its talent, crafting jealous and restrictive contracts that try to prevent superstars from leaving for cooler jobs elsewhere. "What if the best course of action was to bid the employee a fond farewell and to later treat them as alums and potential rehires?" she asks in her book, which is reviewed on page 64. "What if the most effective strategies of motivating innovation in the firm were to allow the spilling of secrets and the shared ownership of ideas?" The business school community has long understood that collaboration can be one of the most fruitful components of competition. Professors frequently pursue scholarly research in company with colleagues from other universities, and schools often hire visiting professors to fill crucial positions. Indeed, for some schools—such as CENTRUM Católica in Peru, which was profiled in the November/December 2011 BizEd—the faculty roster is largely built on part-time and affiliated faculty. This shared model might become even more important as business schools continue to proliferate and administrators look for nontraditional ways to hire professors. No matter how collaboratively they approach the process, however, today's administrators still face challenges when it comes to recruiting, and we look at some of those challenges in "Attracting the Best Faculty." Deans from Virginia State, University of Alaska, EMLYON, and Lagos Business School describe the particular obstacles they have to overcome when hiring professors—but they also detail some of the major concerns all deans are facing today. Some observers believe that a few of those concerns could be obviated if faculty were no longer tenured. In "Two Takes on Tenure," John A. Pearce makes the case in favor of keeping tenure, but James C. Wetherbe explains why he thinks it should go. How schools approach the tenure question could dramatically affect the protocol of faculty recruiting. Whether or not tenure stays in the picture, it's clear that faculty recruiting will remain a challenge for deans. While it's unlikely that they'll buy up other schools just to acq-hire top talent, they'll need to consider other creative ways to bring the best teachers to their campuses. Lobel calls this being smarter about "human capital strategies." We say it's the 21st-century way of teaching business.