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Everyone has plans. Those who excel at implementing ‘the plan’ are usually operating on old information. If you have up to date information and high quality analysis you can make your çompetitor’s plans irrelevant. Competitor actions, on the other hand, are not so easy to avoid. If you have the right process in place, then you have a fair chance of predicting their likely options and which they will choose.
“…fools are able to ruin a friendship but wise people know how to profit even from enmities.” (Plutarch 46-120AD) You can do business so as to avoid bumping into other companies, or you can focus on your goals (and your strategy) and realise that inevitably, you are going to annoy others. You can believe the mantra that patents are evil, or you can invest in protecting your inventions so that you can… Read More
Another IP strategy mistake is to overestimate competitors. This mistake is not as rich in case examples as underestimating competitors because it tends to drive inaction. We can see cases where it would have been easy to overestimate the competition, however. RIM appeared to have a secure position in smartphones with BlackBerry before Apple and Android showed up. Nike and Adidas dominated sports apparel – and then Under Armour appeared to stake… Read More
We wrote in a previous blog post that the greatest risk in strategy is to over or underestimate the risk. This is why in the art of military strategy opponents work hard to deceive their adversaries. Deception can cause adversaries to overestimate risk when they should not and underestimate risk when they should not, leading them to take actions that are against their best interests – for example attacking where you have… Read More
Tiger decided to benchmark Lion to see why Lion was the King of Beasts and not Tiger. Tiger determined that Lion was King of Beasts because Lion hunted together in a pride and Tiger hunted alone. So Tiger organized into a pride and soon starved to death in the jungle. The point of benchmarking is to look for ideas that could prove useful to your organization. They always need to be put… Read More
Here are three that should be near the top of your priorities. 1 – Listen & learn Before you commit to anything, make sure you have spent a lot of time understanding the context, the people and the real goals of the organization. These are not always the same as the stated goals… Armed with this, you are going to be much more effective. 2 – Build relationships An IP Strategy role… Read More
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
Millions of dollars are invested every year in protecting new ideas through intellectual property – for many however the strength of these intellectual property rights is still largely misunderstood. Probably the most common mistake related to the strength of IP has not so much to do with the strength of the right itself but with the owner’s perception of what it means. An IPR will not give you the complete and utter… Read More
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