It's pretty cool to see this article mention Polanyi, who is very pertinent I think. Yes, he wrote about tacit knowledge as something not formalizable. But it's

It's pretty cool to see this article mention Polanyi, who is very pertinent I think. Yes, he wrote about tacit knowledge as something not formalizable. But it's not just that. His goal was to protect scientists' freedom from Soviet goals of centrally planned discoveries. Science doesn't work that way, he argued. And it seems similar ideas can be applied to these employment contracts: the company gets benefits while the scientist is employed, but once they leave, the new directions of their research are unpredictable, and shouldn't be owned or controlled by non-competes etc. That's a pretty vague connection, but I feel like someone could develop it further.