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Maintaining innovation potential means that ideas, and the people generating those ideas, should be at the firms disposal. Furthermore, the firm should be able to capture value from people's ideas. Losing these people therefore poses risks. Managing these risks is challenging, especially without intra-firm consensus on their role. This study examines how and why perceptions of severity and management of risks related to knowledge leaving and knowledge leaking differ across organisational levels and different firm locations. Depending on what types of differences are present, and why similarities and differences emerge, managers can direct their attention to different control or commitment-enhancing practices to address the risk of harmful knowledge loss and imitation. They should do this in a manner that enables them to maintain the prerequisites for future innovation and a creative work environment, while at the same time allowing global coordination and local adaptation.

Although the first look might suggest otherwise, knowledge protection is a complex phenomenon that does not lend itself to easy classification. Discussion easily turns to intellectual property rights (IPRs) such as patents or secrecy, while other aspects such as human resource management (HRM) for knowledge protection is neglected. Yet, innovative firms depend on their knowledgeable employees to generate new innovation, to assist in profiting from them, and maintain the capabilities for later innovative activities. Therefore both reactive and proactive action is needed to mitigate problems with knowledge leaving and leaking. This study addresses the ways in which companies can prepare for knowledge-related risks as early as during employee recruitment. The findings from our case study suggest that somewhat different issues are considered in relation to different types of risks (leaving and leaking), and that while intuition plays a notable role in proactive assessment, a more analytical approach can also be taken.