Innovate or Perish: Managing the Enduring Technology Company in the Global Market

Fuel and Guidance for Innovation

Utilizing effective strategic intellectual property (IP) management can explicitly fuel, direct, and coordinate innovative activities to create successful market outcomes.

Indeed, IP assets comprising patents, trademarks, copyrights, technological know-how, designs, formulas, and trade secrets are the fastest-growing assets in many of the world’s economies. The more visionary executives realize they can quantitatively answer some key questions on corporate strategy, competitive analysis, innovation opportunities (the product/market matrix) utilizing strategic IP management:

• Corporate strategy:

  • Is our IP aligned with our corporate strategy and business goals?

  • Who are our strategic IP partners?

  • Are we capturing all our IP?

  • How can we monetize our IP, which IP, and to whom?

  • How can we optimize the value of our IP portfolio?

  • Does our IP portfolio have high value with high protection?

  • Do we have any IP leakage?

  • Is our IP distributed over the whole value chain?

  • How can we get the best innovation return on investment?

• Competitive strategy:

  • Who are our real competitors, what do they have now, where are they going, and what are their IP landscapes and innovation maps?

  • Who will be our surprise competitors that we don’t know in our IP universe?

  • Is our IP strong and complete enough for a product differentiation or low-cost leadership strategy?

  • What are the gaps in our competitors’ IP portfolios?

  • What don’t we know—what new IP and from whom?

• Product/market matrix:

  • Where are ...