The importance of Intellectual Property (IP)

Intellectual capital is one of the most important assets of many of the world’s largest and most powerful companies. By establishing a patent portfolio, companies can create a foundation for market dominance and trigger an added on-going revenue stream while protecting their return on investment and continuing growth and innovation. Intellectual property is often the key objective in mergers and acquisitions and companies are increasingly using licensing routes to increase profitability and create a passive revenue stream.

A patent protects new inventions, and new and useful improvements of an existing invention, and allows the patent holder to stop others from exploiting its technology. A patent can be licensed to others in exchange for royalties, or may be sold as an asset. Currently, companies are not focusing enough effort nor have the sufficient expertise to claim intellectual property as assets for the business.

But how does a company develop and execute on an IP Strategy in order to maximize intangible asset value? Creating an IP strategy is only one part of the process. Companies must establish an IP Culture within the fabric of the business as a responsibility from manager to employee – in other words, this is not a task for a separate team. The people involved must be allowed to have personal time to work on innovation activities and be given an opportunity to step outside their daily routine for idea generation.

ASIDE: Google gives their employees 20% of their time to work on their own projects. 3M gives 15%.

While at Genesys, I was awarded a patent for Personal Agent Greetings in a Communication Center Environment. For years, customers asked us if it was possible to do agent greetings without a switch matrix, and for years we said, “no”, until one day, sitting in a  rowboat while fishing in New Brunswick, how to do agent greetings without a switch matrix became obvious to me, and a patent resulted.

One way of understanding Intellectual Property and how it can work for your company can be by hiring visionary and strategy consultants, as well as patent agents who have been through it before. Having these types of consultants spend a couple days with your staff to spark innovative thought and create processes around having innovation as part of the corporate culture, is key to creating a solid IP strategy within your organization.