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Einstein said: “life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.” Similarly, with businesses and business strategy. A business that does not move forward will lose its balance between profiting from existing business enterprises and building (or acquiring) new enterprises for future growth. Consider Kodak, a US colossus recently in the news, that focused so heavily on its existing film business that it failed to effectively harness… Read More
Can you really have a cohesive IP Strategy at the corporate level? I don’t think so. Unless of course they are one and the same thing. (Small companies with effectively one business unit obviously have the same IP Strategy for both.) Otherwise, each business unit needs its own defined IP Strategy – focused on the strategy and its execution required to meet its specific goals. As soon as you start building a… Read More
Perhaps for the first time in history, humankind has the capacity to create far more information than anyone can absorb, to foster far greater interdependency than anyone can manage, and to accelerate change far faster than anyone’s ability to keep pace (Peter Senge – author of “The fifth discipline: the art and practice of learning organizations”). In business reality being satisfied with status quo is like trying to swim against the current… Read More
There may be no better competitive advantage in business than to be able to offer a valuable solution for free for which a rival must receive remuneration to stay in business. The idea follows the line of the business axiom to give away the razors (a durable) for free so that people buy the razor blades (a consumable). It’s a dynamic that, for another illustration, means that there really cannot be a… Read More
What is an ideal strategy and would you know one if it bit you? Why bother with it anyway? The ideal strategy is a strategy that provides 100% of the desired benefit and 0% drawback. It is a theoretical target given the mathematical reality that 1/0 (where whole benefit = 1, and no drawback = 0) does not exist – all strategies have drawbacks. A key question to ask, when planning IP… Read More
‘Think globally, act locally’ – but do you really mean it? This has been the slogan of many multinationals during the years but still many fail in this respect. The new wave of expansions into China, India and Indonesia give probably the most vivid examples of the need to think locally: understand the culture, find key partners, understand the legal constraints and develop IP and business strategies that work within the given… Read More
Focus on the effect you wish your IP to have, not on the IP itself. On many occasions during IP strategy training courses I have given, I have suggested that patent strategists learn how to play the Chinese game of Go. Go is a well-known game of strategy in the East, just as Chess is in the West. The mindset needed to win the game of Go is similar to the mindset… Read More
Welcome to the IP Think Tank podcast for Thursday 4 November 2010. In this show Duncan is joined by Kim Chotkowski, Stan Abrams and Robert Cantrell to discuss: China innovation and indigenous innovation Correlating innovation and patent filings in China Reverse guest host strategy US election and impact on patent reform Chinese patent trolls (cockroaches); and Twitter’s patent strategy We hope you enjoy this week’s show, and as always, we look forward… Read More
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