It's funny, I used to argue at my old work about freedom and ingenuity vs. statsis. I was never able to articulate it as well as this book review of Virginia Postrel's The Future and it's Enemies.

We used to run projects where people had little control to make decisions, many things needed to be cleared by managers. Decision making was concentrated in few hands and rigidly enforced. We had rule book after rule book trying to list out all the acceptable processes for any and all projects. I often found myself in small bits of trouble for ignoring such rules in order to keep a project solid and clean and the people working on the projects happy. And the ironic thing was that this was in a small consulting company - and compared to our clients, we were inventive and flexible. I kept arguing for being more inventive and more flexible, but often found myself with few allies when the time came to make changes - or decisions, I should say.

Guess that's why I quit and went to film school.