I watched a couple of games of Little League Baseball while visiting the USA last week.  They were great.

We modify the game for beginners so that they can focus down on the important aspects first, and so they don’t get hurt.

There are some useful lessons here for companies delving into a new area of IP Strategy for the first time. I’m often telling clients – ‘Now that we’ve discussed the overall picture, here are the top 3 to worry about for now. Let’s deal with the rest when we have these working well.’ The implementation and success rates are much higher this way.

The tricks are in getting the initial list right, prioritising them correctly, and most of all, really focusing on the shortlist.