Privacy supports creativity in another way: it offers us the freedom to experiment unobserved. When our work is a performance put on for the benefit of others, we’re less likely to try new approaches that might fail or look messy. Ethan Bernstein, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, has investigated the relationship between privacy and innovation at a mobile phone factory in China. In a study published in 2012, he found that granting the workers greater privacy—concealing their activities behind a curtain—led them to become more innovative and more productive. They came up with
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