In Duplicity, Tony Gilroy’s latest film - think the Bourne trilogy scripter and Michael Clayton writer-director - CIA officer Claire Stenwick (Julia Roberts) and MI6 agent Ray Koval (Clive Owen) have left the world of government intelligence to cash in on the highly profitable cold war raging between two rival multinational corporations. Their mission: secure the formula for an over-the-counter consumer drug. A sophisticated romantic thriller, Duplicity engages the corporate mind while weaving in an espionage anti-script. What, however, does Duplicity do for innovation?

Duplicity is an action movie for the business mind. Howard Tully, a corporate chieftain, epitomizes and emphasizes why innovating product cannot compete with stealing said product:

Why are we here? Because it’s no longer enough to have the best ideas or the best manufacturing or the best pipeline to deliver your product. We’re here today because we find ourselves in a world where duplicity and theft are tested daily as replacements for innovation and perseverance.

Via Duplicity Director Tony Gilroy’s interview on “How Spying Can Trump Innovation” in Fast Company:

If you’re going to spend $60 million to develop a product and take five years to do it, I could spend $2 million on intelligence — equipment, personnel, whatever I need — and I could have your $60 million investment for $2 million.

On several levels, the film dramatizes the convictions which conscript military-level spies into corporate service - how’s that for concentrated c-level alliteration?

There’s the need for non-government entrepreneurialism (think NGOs, Non-Gov’t Orgs, for entrepreneurs or NGEs) tied to the “money” factor - stealing said formula before it’s patented by companies who either create or steal it. The payout that eludes most civil servants is found in innovating the corporate security system via ‘cloak and dagger’ strategies.

By flipping the switch on how R&D being either proactive or reactive, the film allows its chief executives to create conflicts or roadblocks to competitors’ growth.

Koval and Stenwick have their own ’small business’ enterprise (somewhat-spoiler: they are sexual partners and work to rip off bigger co’s by playing both sides), which is dramatized quite well in a scene involving a certain woman’’s panties: Koval is innocent of any partner infidelity until he turns his back and breathes a private sigh.

Similarly, the technology of stealing innovations is well-explored. The digital encryption of offices, employee website tracking and travel itineraries is explored in all of their seemingly transparent complexities.

The competitive intelligence underground is given individual faces - each is akin to a think tank member who focuses on one covert activity in analysis, field agenting or invention.

Via Tony Gilroy in “The Twisted Mind Behind Julia” in The Daily Beast:

The competitive intelligence business is enormous. I didn’t have to make up anything to put it in the movie, I actually had to consolidate some things, and push some stories around and I intensify a little bit but there isn’t anything in the movie that doesn’t happen [in real life].

Last, the innovation of editing in the film is right up their with the Bourne series, but with a darker, comedic undertone. Gilroy drives two disparate genres - romance and the thriller - into one slim-line, sophisticated caper.

Smarter than The Thomas Crown Affair, but equally as entertaining. Now if Gilroy would only take over the writing duties for Oceans 14-20 under Steven Soderbergh…