The Common Man: the new superhero

For the past few years, the ICC has been trying to promote cricket in non-playing countries. The BCCI is the riches cricket board in the world. It is primarily dependent on the Indian cricket players for its revenues. Almost all of the players can afford the services of consultants and lawyers who advise them on the contracts they sign. These were the primary reasons for the bargaining power of Indian players.

Looking at the interest of various stakeholders, should there be a limit on the number of endorsements that a player can do so that such conflicts can be avoided and one can focus on cricket? Shouldn't players not become bigger and important than the game itself? Wouldn't it be great if our cricketers translated their on-field heroics to off the pitch by aiding and improving the dismal situation of Indian domestic cricket and other sports as well.

Coming back to software professionals, as pointed out by Santosh, software professionals in their early career will not have the kind of bargaining power to alter contracts especially when many organizations recruit in bulk. Research has shown that an individual is at his creative best and full of ideas till the age of 25-27. Thus, by the time most professional would be able to be in a position to bargain, they would have already moved out of their creative phases. Also, early on in one's career, one has more free time on hand since one is free from family and social obligations. And hence this is the time when an individual needs to be given the freedom to explore and pursue things that he/she is passionate about.

Its time for the Common Man to take the lead. Its time that individuals in top management acted as heroes and created a culture that supports employees and innovation.

As already pointed out by Ritesh, Google is an organization that promotes and rewards innovation through its '80-20 innovation time-off model'. And it has been this very policy that has given rise to projects and services like Gmail, Google News, AdSense, Orkut etc.

Maybe its time, a Google - our hero in innovation - came up with an innovation that would benefit things like the open source movement. May be a service to educate and empower individuals and establish a level playing field that fosters creativity and innovation.