When I was a young student, hearing all the marketing talk from various companies about all their valuable intellectual property that is supposedly incorporated in their products and about their valuable trade secrets that are supposedly guarded from their competitors, I thought that when I will start working at such a company I would learn a lot of useful things, much above what I was learning as a student.
However, after working at many companies, big and small, I was disappointed to find out that my expectations had been naive. In no such company have I seen any useful secret. There has been only one case when I have thought at first that I have learned something not widely known, but then, through a search through the older literature, I have found that fact published in an old research paper.
The only really useful information that I have found at every such workplace in a successful company, was the know-how about a long list of engineering solutions that I could think of when confronted with solving a new problem, but which were known by the experienced staff as dead ends, which had been tried by them, but for various reasons were not acceptable solutions.
The know-how about such solutions that do not work and especially why they do not work, was much more valuable than what was officially considered as intellectual property, e.g. patents or copyrights.
I'd expect even if we were to move towards preregistration widely, that this situation would remain to some degree. Because universities lack the resources, pressure and time needed to turn a novel idea into a commercial product. As seen with battery research, being good at one thing is not enough, the solution needs to be bad at nearly nothing to compete with li-ion. In my experience some seemingly solvable roadblocks can turn into showstoppers very late and some showstoppers were not anyones radar whiling conceptualizing the solution.
However, after working at many companies, big and small, I was disappointed to find out that my expectations had been naive. In no such company have I seen any useful secret. There has been only one case when I have thought at first that I have learned something not widely known, but then, through a search through the older literature, I have found that fact published in an old research paper.
The only really useful information that I have found at every such workplace in a successful company, was the know-how about a long list of engineering solutions that I could think of when confronted with solving a new problem, but which were known by the experienced staff as dead ends, which had been tried by them, but for various reasons were not acceptable solutions.
The know-how about such solutions that do not work and especially why they do not work, was much more valuable than what was officially considered as intellectual property, e.g. patents or copyrights.