Despite (perhaps because) its centrality, "IP" is one of those maddeningly vague terms that applies to many different legal doctrines, as well as a set of nebulous, abstract thought-objects that do *not* qualify for legal protection. "IP" doesn't just refer to copyright, trademark and patent - though these "core three" systems are so heterogeneous in basis, scope and enforcement that the act of lumping them together into a single category confuses more than it clarifies.

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Beyond the "core three" of copyright, patent and trademark, "IP" also refers to a patchwork of "neighboring rights" that only exist to varying degrees around the world, like "anticircumvention rights," "database rights" and "personality rights." Then there are doctrines that have come to be thought of as IP, even though they were long considered separate: confidentiality, noncompete and nondisparagement.

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Finally, there are those "nebulous, abstract thought-objects" that get labeled "IP," even if no one can really define what they are - for example, the "format" deals that TV shows like *Love Island* or *The Traitors* make around the world, which really amount to consulting deals to help other TV networks create a local version of a popular show, but which are treated as the sale of some (nonexistent) exclusive right.

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It's hard to find a commonality amongst all these wildly different concepts, but a couple years ago, I hit on a working definition of "IP" that seems to cover all the bases: I say that "IP" means "any rule, law or policy that allows a company to exert control over its critics, competitors or customers":

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

Put that way, it's easy to see why "IP" would be such a central organizing principle in a modern, end-stage capitalist world.

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But even though "IP" is treated as a firm's most important asset, it's actually far less important than another intangible: *process knowledge*.

I first came across the concept of "process knowledge" in Dan Wang's *Breakneck*, a very good book about the rise and rise of Chinese manufacturing, industrialization and global dominance:

https://danwang.co/breakneck/

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I picked up *Breakneck* after reading others whom I admire who singled out the book's treatment of process knowledge for praise and further discussion. The political scientist Henry Farrell called process knowledge the key to economic development:

https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/process-knowledge-is-crucial-to-economic

While Dan Davies - a superb writer about organizations and their management - used England's Brompton Bicycles to make the abstract concept of process knowledge very concrete indeed:

https://backofmind.substack.com/p/the-brompton-ness-of-it-all

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So what is process knowledge? It's all the knowledge that workers collectively carry around in their heads - hard-won lessons that span firms and divisions, that can never be adequately captured through documentation. Think of a worker at a chip fab who finds themself with a load of microprocessors that have failed QA because they become unreliable when they're run above a certain clockspeed.

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If that worker knows enough about downstream customers' processes, they can contact one of those customers and offer the chips for use in a lower-end product, which can save the fab millions and make millions more for the customer.

This just happened to Apple, who seized upon a lot of "binned" microprocessors that were headed to the landfill and designed the Macbook Neo (a new, cheap, low-end laptop) around them, salvaging the defective chips by running them at lower speeds.

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The result? Apple's most successful laptop in *years*, which has now sold so well that Apple has exhausted the supply of defective chips and is scrambling to fill orders:

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/04/07/macbook-neo-massive-dilemma/

Process knowledge is squishy, contingent, and wildly important in a world filled with entropy-stricken, off-spec, and stubbornly physical things.

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Work with a machine long enough and you'll develop a Fingerspitzengefühl (fingertip feeling) for the optimal rate to introduce a new load of feedstock to it after it runs dry. Even more importantly: if you work with that machine long enough, you'll have the mobile phone number of the retired person who knows how to un-jam it if you try to reload it too fast on your usual technician's day off. This kind of knowledge can mean the difference between profitability and bankruptcy.

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So why isn't process knowledge given the centrality in our conceptions of what makes a corporation valuable?

After reading Wang, Farrell and Davies, I formulated a theory: we ignore process knowledge for the same reason we exalt "IP," because process knowledge *can't* be bought or sold, can't be reflected on a balance-sheet, and can't be controlled, and because "IP" *can*.

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Process knowledge is far more important than "IP" (just try creating a vaccine from a set of instructions *without* the skilled technicians who have already spent years executing similar projects), but process knowledge is spread out amongst workers and *can't* be abstracted away by their bosses.

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Your boss can make you sign a contract assigning all your copyrights and patents to the business, but if you and your team quit your job, all that "IP" will plummet in value without the people who know how to *mobilize* it:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/08/process-knowledge/#dance-monkey-dance

"IP" isn't just a case of "you treasure what you measure" - it's also a case of "you measure what you treasure."

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Recently, I hit on a positively *delightful* Tumblr post that illustrated the importance of process knowledge, and the way that bosses systematically undervalue it:

https://www.tumblr.com/explorerrowan/813098951730479104

This post is one of those glorious internet documents, a novel literary form for which we have no accepted term.

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It comprises 4 sections: a screenshotted Twitter thread made in reply to a throwaway post; a Tumblr reply to the screenshots; another Tumblr reply to the first; and a chorus of more than *38,000* replies, and hashtags added to it. I have no idea what to call this kind of document, in which some people are reacting to others without the others ever knowing about it, but also which is also written by so many authors, many of whom are explicitly interacting with one another.

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It's a "hypertext," sure, but what *kind* of hypertext?

Whatever you call it, it's amazing. As noted, it opens with a Twitter exchange. The first tweet comes from an online dating influencer, "TheEcho13":

> I interviewed a gen z girlie 6 months ago and in the interview she told me that she does not like a challenge, has no interest in career progression, prefers to just do repetitive tasks and will never complain about being bored.

> I hired her.

https://xcancel.com/TheEcho13/status/1948951885693813135#m

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In response, Viveros (a content creator from Alberta and one of the 4m people who saw the original tweet), replied with a short thread about the value of people like this, who "keep the lights on and the business functioning at everything from restaurants to post offices but now nobody’s interested in hiring them":

https://xcancel.com/TheViveros/status/1949149720406110382#m

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These are the "lifer[s] who can teach new people how everything works, who knows what’s up in the system, who knows what the obscure solutions are, and who can help calm down the asshole regulars because they know them more personally." In other words, the keepers of the process knowledge.

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When this screenshotted exchange was posted to Tumblr, it prompted Blinkpatch, who describes themself as a "genderfluid," "ancient" "drifter" who pines for "solar-punk flavored revolution" to reply with a brilliant anecdote about their stint working as a dishwasher:

https://weaselle.tumblr.com/post/790895560390492160/whenever-i-think-about-the-value-of-something

At 16, Blinkpatch was hired as a restaurant dishwasher under the tutelage of Claudio, a 60-year old "career dish pit man."

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Claudio had washed dishes for his whole life, reveling in the fact that he could get work in any city, at any time.

When Claudio realized that Blinkpatch was taking the job seriously, the training began in earnest. Claudio asked Blinkpatch if they wanted to be able to clock off at midnight at the end of each shift, and when Blinkpatch said they did, Claudio laid a lot of process knowledge on them:

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> This machine takes two full minutes to run a cycle. We are on the clock for 8 hours. That means we have a maximum of 240 times we can run this machine. If you want to wash all those dishes, clean your station, mop, and clock off by midnight? This machine has to be on and running every second of the shift.

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> If you don’t have a full load of dishes collected, scraped, rinsed, stacked, and ready to go into the dishwasher the second it’s done every single time? You can’t do it. If, over the course of 8 hours, you let this machine lay idle for just one minute in between finishing each load and being turned on again? Instead of 240 loads, you’ll do 160 loads.

These are the parameters, the kind of thing any Taylorist with a stopwatch could tell you.

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But Claudio went on to explain how that extra idle minute would translate to chaos in the kitchen, as the cooks ran out of pots and the servers ran out of plates, and how they would take out their frustrations on the dishwasher. To optimize that dishwasher, Blinkpatch would need to have a reserve of bulky, machine-filling items that could be run through the machine any time a load finished before there was a sufficient supply of smaller items.

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If they failed at this, Blinkpatch would be washing dishes until 2AM, rather than clocking out at midnight.

Blinkpatch's takeaway was that dishwashing was the bottleneck the whole restaurant ran through - and how that meant that Claudio, who was "unambitious" by conventional standards, had the best understanding of the restaurant's overall operations of anyone on site. He was the keeper of the process knowledge

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This reply prompted another response, from "Marisol," a "haunted house actress and accidental IT person" who told the story of her time working at a medical office that specialized in mental health and addiction recovery:

https://www.tumblr.com/marisolinspades/790960414106304512/all-of-this-disaster-befalls-any-company-that

The company was in the midst of standing up its own purpose-built facility, and the CEO was working intensively with the architect to design this new building.

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When Marisol - the receptionist - happened to be consulted on the near-final design plan, "it took all of three seconds for two major issues to jump out."

First: "The receptionist can’t see the waiting room from her desk with this layout. It’s around the corner and blocked by a wall." This meant that she couldn't "keep track of the patients who are waiting."

The architect and CEO wanted to know why she couldn't use the sign-in sheet to manage this.

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