the outsourced organisation. I know of one company that came up with what was then a radical application of some of its existing IT technology and hardware. However, the company involved had been bought out by a major corporation just over a year earlier and had outsourced all the coding and software development done within the corporation as they didn't see it as a core function.

Well, the project was placed with an outsourced software development mob with all the appropriate contracted safety clauses. Once the completed project was done, tested, and paid for it had the promise of putting the company two years ahead of their competitors. Within a few weeks of the software being made available a competitor's product that worked exactly the same was on the market for only two thirds of the price. Lengthy investigations resulted in the outsourced company having to pay hefty penalties, but the penalties were only about ten percent of the lost profits caused by the rival product. What had happened was the company the work was outsourced to had hired extra local staff to work on just that project, but never had them sign confidentiality agreements with penalties as that wasn't common in that country. So after completing the project for the first company they made another version with slightly changed code and sold that to a competitor for a huge profit.

Lesson learned, when you outsource work you have no idea or control over who the service supplier hires or how they go about the work.