Wheat breeder seen from behind at dawn, looking across rows of small breeding trial plots stretching to the horizon.

Some assets cannot be built on any timeline a budget can shorten. When that is true, the choice is no longer build, buy or licence. It is licence, or stay out....

A navigator seen from behind at a ship's chart table at dawn, the plotted route ending mid-chart, open sea ahead.

Long-lived patents, an AI-shifted landscape: why a fixed filing roadmap fails, and the three decision rules an IP strategy needs instead.

Engineer seen from behind on a lit industrial steel staircase, landings receding above and below

Most boards plan around a single date. The patent expires, competitors arrive, the revenue line falls off a ledge. That model is tidy, it sits in the forecast, and for high-value...

Person seen from behind walking down a dim archive aisle of shelved boxes, holding a lit tablet.

Intellectual property rights don’t dissolve the moment you stop paying attention to them. That’s the thread running through several developments last week, and it’s worth more attention than most companies give...

Technician seen from behind in a dark data centre, looking down a long aisle of lit server racks.

If a capability you spent years building can be downloaded on a Sunday afternoon, the question is not how to stop that. It is what you own that survives it. Ben...

Red figurine on a dark surface, its reflection repeating through frosted glass panels, symbolising brand protection.

Here is an uncomfortable number for anyone responsible for brand protection: when consumers ask an AI tool about a brand, the brand’s own website supplies only 1–2 per cent of the...

The most expensive failures in R&D are not the projects that fail. They are the projects that should never have started — and the ones that limp along because nobody had...

A single trail of footprints crossing fresh untouched snow toward a glowing dawn horizon.

A new technology hits a point where the question stops being whether it works and becomes who already owns the ground around it. Quantum computing has recently crossed that line. McKinsey’s...

Technical drawing of gears on drafting paper in front of real brass gears turning on a desk, symbolising IP strategy in action.

Many intellectual property strategies don’t fail because they were poorly designed. They fail because nothing changes after the sign-off. New McKinsey research in Harvard Business Review — How to Ensure Your...

Glowing glass chess king on a dark boardroom table at dusk, symbolising IP strategy and competitive advantage.

When investors describe a winning company, they now reach for three ideas: credible AI adoption, resilience, and durable competitive advantage. McKinsey’s latest survey of long-term investors — What matters most to...