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What are the different approaches currently taken and what we can learn?

Imagine…
Scientist Claire is the lead of one of the many teams within her big pharma company, all of whom are toiling day and night to develop a vaccine as soon as possible to combat the corona virus. Will they be able to put something out in time to help affected people?

Public health officer James has been asked by his superiors to find a solution for tracking those affected by the virus without compromising their privacy. Who can support him with such a solution?

Engineer Jin has supported her hardware firm to rapidly develop and deliver ventilators to the local hospitals to overcome the shortage. Can her firm do all of it on their own?

All three persons need the right resources at the right time during these desperate times. Supply chains are disrupted, local manufacturing is not ready to meet the rapidly increasing demands for healthcare items, and technology and knowledge are put at stress by the pandemic.

The world is going through a health and economic crisis. To alleviate suffering and combat the pandemic, there is an on-going race to develop vaccines and treatments. In addition, there are multiple initiatives to scale up the production of essential equipment and materials such as ventilators, masks, inhalers, development of new technologies, processes etc, to help treat affected people and save lives.

One may think, what has Intellectual Property (IP) got to do with the on-going innovative projects? Or just about anything that is going on now? We think IP plays a crucial role in the choices that governments, companies, policymakers and even citizens make during these challenging times, because a lot depends on the delicate balance that should be maintained between establishing access to and the protection of IP. Who knows and owns what? How can that be put to use during this time of crisis?

The key question is: where to start now to beat Covid-19? Claire, James, and Jin are looking for solutions. Answers to which lie in the Innovation and IP strategy they and their organizations would choose.

Read the complete blog and download the pdf version here

 

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Introduction

In recent times, there is a worldwide shift of attitude taking place within organizations; from a short-term approach driven predominantly by creating value for shareholders to a long-term value creation model where shareholders become one of the many stakeholders for the company to consider when creating value, and where social and environmental considerations play an important role[1].

• What does this mind shift mean for organization’s innovation approach and what’s the role of Intellectual Property (IP) in this transition?
• Is it a logical step to also share the related IP freely in order to accelerate the diffusion of relevant IP[2]?
• Or is the more classical approach still valid; guard and protect your IP closely as an ongoing boost for your business model?
• A key question is: what is the best way to use IP to create social impact?

Today, organizations manoeuvre themselves in a range of positions from a traditional charity to a traditional business. On the one hand a traditional business needs to adapt to the changing demands of the society that is calling for more responsible action from business. Commercial organizations are prioritizing the creation of a ‘shared value’[3] within or from their traditional ‘for profit’ business, in multiple ways: creating impact by fulfilling their Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR) obligations, innovation for social impact within their core business itself, supporting social innovators with technology transfer or capacity building, taking up projects that aim to fulfil the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s), etc. On the other hand, traditional charities, have to sustain themselves to continue the work they do for communities in the most relevant way.

Whether an organization is a business or a charity, or somewhat of a hybrid, they face similar challenges: creating value and capturing value.

Questions lots of organizations nowadays struggle with are the following:

• How can you capture the value you’ve created – in your new ideas, knowledge, Intellectual Property (IP) – in social innovation, whether it’s for profit or not?
• Do ‘not for profits’ and ‘for profits’ take a different approach to social innovation?
• Does social innovation mean revealing ideas, knowledge and IP for free?
• Are there bigger factors that influence how we deal with IP in social innovation?
• How does this impact a business model for a company or a sustenance model for a charity?
• What do organizations aiming for solutions through social innovation and shared value choose; open or closed innovation strategies?

At the initiative of Ms Raluca Radu, Legal Director of Fairphone, a panel discussion on ‘Developing Sustainability through Intellectual Property’, took place at the IP World Summit in Amsterdam, end of October 2019, attempting to address some of these questions. We had an engaging discussion and exchanged insights from different perspectives (industry, academia and the civil society).

Raluca asked me to introduce ‘the Innovation Matrix’ and we discussed how it can be used to create strategies designed for social innovation. In this blog I will summarize some aspects that I believe may influence the approach for social innovation and some examples as discussed in the panel.

The Matrix gives an overview of nine possible innovation & IP strategies. The x-axis of the Matrix represents how many parties you can work with: open versus closed innovation, so whether you innovate individually, with some parties, or with many parties. The y-axis represents the approach taken towards IP: whether the organization guards their IP, licenses it to some or instead reveals it to many. The four corners of the Matrix are the extremes with Classical R&D, Reveal to the Public, Open Source and Crowd Innovation. The cross or the mellow middle as we call it is dynamic in the sense that organizations can get creative in their approach to Innovation and IP. For a more detailed explanation including many real life examples, please refer to our book ‘The Innovation Matrix, 3 moves to design a winning strategy for Innovation & Intellectual Property’, BIS Publishers, Amsterdam, 2019.

I presented three key questions surrounding social innovation and IP:

1. Which IP is core for your organization in order to create social impact?
2. Can you better guard or reveal your IP?
3. Can diffusing your IP stimulate social impact and/or the business model?

In the cases presented and discussed at the panel you can get new insights into the strategy devised by raising these questions.

For example:

• G-STAR – international fashion brand – is a nice case to illustrate the relevance of the core/non-core question. They made the process of producing sustainable denim open source. The production process of the jeans fabric as raw material is not considered as their core they want to compete with. Their core is the design and branding of their jeans. So they used their non-core IP in order to make their industry more sustainable.
  
• ColorADD – a colour identification system to help the colourblind – uses two diffusion strategies: one is licensing for free for use of their code in the educational field, and two, the sale of the code through paid licenses in all other fields of use.
  
• Tesla – global electrical car manufacturer – is a good example of a company diffusing their IP to create social impact while also boosting their business model. They opened up their IP portfolio for parties using it for the good and to stimulate the whole industry to quickly develop and grow. In fact the classical car industry was the real competitor for all.
  

These cases illustrate that you can diffuse your IP and at the same time protect them. It’s not a definite ‘or-or’, often it is ‘and-and’. You can guard your IP with paid licensing in one market and in another market reveal your IP for free.

To stimulate the debate I summarized and concluded that if you are a business engaged in social innovation:

1. First assess which IP is core and non-core for your business. Only diffuse your core IP for free when it is a catalyst for your business model.
2. If you are diffusing your core IP for free and it adds as a catalyst for social innovation only and not for your business model, then it could lead to the end of your companies’ life cycle.
3. If you purely aim for social impact and you have your investors who are backing you in this ‘diffusion for free’ strategy of your core IP, it could still be the right thing to do.

The same principles can be applied to not for profits, if your replace the term business model with your organization’s sustainability model.

The panelists challenged some of these propositions by discussing the scale between social value and financial value, both for ‘for profits’ and ‘not for profits’. Ref the visual below[4].

The approach taken by social innovators with business ambitions can be largely different from that of non-profit NGOs. Further, the separation of business model from responsible business conduct was discussed. Sometimes, the core business can be driven by the demands of ‘conscious customers/users’, in which case, the social objective may trump the business model in order of priority. Even so, I believe that a non-profit, expending its limited resources in addressing a social issue, must pay further attention to how it diffuses its IP. Their IP too can be managed otherwise – without making it free in all cases – while creating the social impact they desire.

One of the outcomes of our research is that the most successful organizations often combine two or three strategy boxes from the Matrix instead of just applying one strategy. The success lies in the combination, based on the needs and objectives of the organization. The context within which an organization makes these choices can be analysed quickly in a structured manner by using the following six ‘Building Blocks’: interests, contributions, technology, business model, industry, and organization (‘Move 1’ in our book ‘the Innovation Matrix’).

Literature on Innovation & IP strategy in general and especially on IP strategies in social innovation is still scarce. I was very happy to learn that Professor Elisabeth Eppinger, from the University of Applied Science in Berlin, started some important and interesting research projects in this field. She shared the below overview of benefits of both open/sharing and closed IP strategies for sustainable innovations.

One of the interesting aspects Elisabeth referred to is that open/sharing IP strategies can enable repair and remanufacturing, which could be quite beneficial to lengthen life cycles of electronic articles. While companies that serve a global market have little incentives to install repair and remanufacturing services for their products, IP such as trade secrets and patents in some instances block others to set up repair centers. Opening IP, e.g. with a differentiated licensing approach to support consumers and repair and remanufacturing companies may help achieving the environmental agendas set by the UN and many nation states.

This is one of the strategies used by Fairphone. Fairphone aims to maintain their phones for a period of 2 to 5 years. One of Fairphone’s manifesto’s is “if you cannot repair it, you don’t own it”. The design of their smart phone is modular and the phone can quite easily be repaired, having received a score of 10/10 from iFixit. iFixit company sells repair spare parts for electronics and publishes free online repair guides on its website. Fairphone provides hardware and software maintenance for this extended period, as part of their regular commercial servicing.

Elisabeth further underlined the importance of embracing IP as a tool to facilitate Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and sustainability aspects in the overall business strategy. While it is challenging to align the IP strategy with the business model, IP can serve as a tool, e.g. through differentiated licensing approaches, to foster new forms of collaboration for innovation and market diffusion.

Andreas Iwerbäck, Director of Group IP Intelligence at Husqvarna, based in Sweden, observed that the Innovation Matrix is dynamic by nature. Husqvarna is transforming from a hardware company (outdoor power tools) with a more classical R&D approach in the past, to a hardware and software company which is embracing sustainable innovation. The proof-of-concept “Battery Box” (community demand driven app – online tool shed) and the GARDENA smart system (garden maintenance app accessible to compatible devices from other manufacturers as well, which can be connected to the system via the app), both take a platform approach to engage their customers.

Sarah Norkor Anku, Senior Partner of Anku at Law from Ghana, shared some examples of innovation that have created a social impact in the African continent:

• i-Cow a mobile app built around an agricultural ecosystem for small-scale dairy farmers in Kenya prompts farmers on vital days of cows gestation period; helps farmers find the nearest vet and AI providers; collects and stores farmer milk and breeding records and sends farmers best dairy practices[5].
  
• Leti Arts (video game company) from Ghana, whose mission is to find a place for African created content in the global community, diffuses their technology through MTN (telecom) to have outreach. They use MTN’s resources and market space to diffuse its technologies, and more importantly achieve their cultural objective.
  

Further, she highlighted the importance of a sustainable supply chain and the use of superior technology which can help address certain environmental crises, as has occurred in the mining sector in Ghana. Particular to Artisanal and Small Scale Mining (ASM) of which 85% is illegal in Ghana. These miners use rudimentary and inferior technologies. With the diffusion of superior sustainable technologies, the adverse effect on the environment will be minimized.

Raluca added that the immediate question here is: who should demand for, pay and provide for improving the environmental output and the health and safety of the ASM miners? Is it the governments, the ASM miners themselves, the local companies who buy from the ASM miners and then sell their products to companies that operate in the international markets, is it the international companies that buy from the local companies, or maybe the ultimate consumers? This is probably one of the biggest debates that are going on in our societies now, both at a regulatory and political level. We do see a trend of emerging legislation across Europe that is aiming to ask companies to do more due diligence of their supply chains, which is driven by the EU corporate sustainability agenda[6].

Discussions over this topic have kept me thinking in the past months because of the many influences over and dynamics at play in social innovation. As panelists, we came out with many more ideas and questions on this topic. To feed our minds and build on this topic, we invite you to share your experiences with us. Interesting subjects we would like to further explore are the following:

• What drives the customers and users of social and sustainable organizations? What is the role of conscious customers/users in social innovation?
• What is the role of policy makers, regulators and law makers in social innovation? How can governments stimulate social innovation?
• A question was raised about stealth innovation; what is it, why would a social company use it and how does it influence IP strategies?
• How does social innovation and measuring its impact influence corporate governance? What needs to be updated here; which key performance metrics and incentives are needed and wished?

If you would like to know more or if you would like to participate in our research and discussions on this topical subject, please contact one of us.

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[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/business/business-roundtable-ceos-corporations.html
[2] Eppinger, E., N. Bocken, C. Dreher, A. Gurtoo, R. H. Chea, S. Karpakal, V. Prifti, F. Tietze, and P. Vimalnath. The Role of Intellectual Property Rights in Sustainable Business Models: Mapping IP Strategies in Circular Economy Business Models. Presented at the 4th International Conference on New Business Models, Berlin on 1-3 July 2019
[3] Defined as policies and operating practices that enhance the competitiveness of a company while simultaneously advancing the economic and social conditions in the communities in which it operates, in the Harvard Business Review: ‘Creating Shared Value’ by Michael E. PorterMark R. Kramer, from the January–February 2011 Issue.
[4] Source: Adapted from J.Kingston Venturesome, CAF Venturesome, and European Venture Philantropy Association (2015) https://www.sosense.org/the-finance-paradoxon-for-social-enterprises/
[5] http://icow.co.ke/about
[6] http://corporatejustice.org/news/16793-mandatory-human-rights-due-diligence-an-issue-whose-time-has-come

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Mirjam Ros, author of ‘The Innovation Matrix, BIS Publishers, Amsterdam, 2019 together with Deepika Jeyakodi

Panel leader:

• Raluca Radu, Legal Director Fairphone

Panel members:

• Elisabeth Eppinger, Professor at the University of Applied Science in Berlin
• Sarah Norkor Anku, Senior Partner of Anku at Law from Ghana
• Andreas Iwerbäck, Director of Group IP Intelligence at Husqvarna

 

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A timeline, for me, was always from the left to the right. Until I saw Stefania Passera’s vertical timeline for Jura, to represent the GDPR Policy. The choice of having a vertical timeline was straight forward she said; a vertical timeline makes for an easy read fora mobile device user.
Source: https://stefaniapassera.com/portfolio/juro/

Copyright© 2017 Stefania Passera. Used with permission.

l love using timelines to present events, actions or deadlines in a chronological order as it can visually present a sequence better than plain text. The vertical timeline made me question about other ways to perceive time, particularly in business.

Copyright© IACCM Contract Design Pattern Library

“Americans see time passing without decisions being made or actions performed as having been “wasted.”Asians do not see time as racing away unutilized in a linear future, but coming around again in a circle, where the same opportunities, risks and dangers will represent themselves when people are so many days, weeks or months wiser.”
Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-different-cultures-understand-time-2014-5?international=true&r=US&IR=T

lf time is perceived by different people differently, how would that be reflected in contracts? Can we have non-linear timelines? Can a cyclic timeline bring more flexibility or understanding? Could we agree on cross-cultural timelines? How would they be designed?

One of the key principles of Legal Design Thinking is ’empathy’: observe your users and find out what they say, think, do and feel while they use your product or service. Using a timeline in your contract can support you to establish a sequence of events in the most practical form. lf you construct such a timeline together with your business partner/collaborator, in the process, you would already achieve an understanding about each side’s perception of time and how that will affect the common output/results. Your negotiations in terms of deadlines, delays and consequent penalties could change depending on this insight.

With more and more organizations and legal professionals adopting design thinking into practise, visual aids such as timelines can greatly evolve based on the needs and perceptions of the users. 1 for one, cannot wait to see timeliness that are far different from what l’ve always known them to be. I eagerly look forward to learning more about how different cultures can influence contrac designs and patterns. Have an interesting experience or idea about cultural influences on legal designs? Share them with us and we can learn together!

For interesting examples of timelines refer to the -updated – IACCM Contract Design Pattern Library designed by Stefania Passera and Helena Haapio.
Source: https://contract-design.iaccm.com

In the patterns library, you can also find an example of a timeline that represents lntellectual Property allocations from our book ‘The lnnovation Matrix’. lt’s a bit ‘boring’ being bath horizontal and linear… lf you have an idea to visualize this differently, let us know!
Source: https://contract-design.iaccm.com/timeline?category%5B0%5D=visuals

Copyright© 2019 Deepika Jeyakodi, Mirjam Ros and BIS Publishers

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Mirjam Ros
Author of ‘The lnnovation Matrix‘, BIS Publishers, Amsterdam, 2019, as written together with Deepika Jeyakodi

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Social innovation is increasingly practised to meet our current social needs such as tackling climate change, responsible use of our resources and giving people equal and fair access to wealth, education and labour.

What’s the role of Intellectual Property (IP) in social innovation? Does IP stimulate or hamper social innovation? What do organizations, who aim to find solutions through social innovation, choose; open or closed innovation strategies? Is there a secret recipe on how to use IP in the best way in order to realize objectives of social innovation?

At the initiative of Ms Raluca Radu, Legal Director of Fairphone, a panel discussion on the role of IP in social innovation will take place at the IP World Summit in Amsterdam on Wednesday 23 October 2019. We hope to present an engaging discussion with different perspectives from industry, academia and the civil society.

Raluca asked me to introduce the ‘Innovation Matrix’ there (please refer to the visual at the left) to discuss how it can be used to create strategies designed for social innovation. In this blog I would like to share some aspects that may influence approaches for social innovation. To know more, visit us at the IP World Summit!

In applying this Matrix to the field of social innovation, it gives an overview of nine possible innovation & IP strategies. The x-axis of the Matrix represents how many parties you can work with: open versus closed innovation, so whether you innovate individually, with some parties or with many parties. The y-axis represents the approach taken towards IP: whether the organization guards their IP, licenses it to some or instead reveals it to many. The four corners of the Matrix are the extremes with Classical R&D, Reveal to the Public, Open Source and Crowd Innovation. For a more detailed explanation including many real life examples, please refer to our book ‘The Innovation Matrix, 3 moves to design a winning strategy for Innovation & Intellectual Property’, BIS Publishers, Amsterdam, 2019.

One of the outcomes of our research is that the most successful organizations often combine two or three strategy boxes from the Matrix instead of just applying one strategy for one product or service. The success lies in the combination, based on the needs and objectives of the organization. The context within which an organization makes these choices can be analysed in a structured and fast way by using the following six so called ‘Building Blocks’: interests, contributions, technology, business model, industry, and organization (‘Move 1’ in our book).

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The first case-study to highlight is that from ColorADD.

They developed a code for a colour identification system to help the colour blind. Their business model is based on two pillars: a pro bono licensing system (for free) for use of their code in the education field and sale of the code through license fees for all other markets. In this example you see that ColorADD differentiates their strategy based upon the use of their product in a market. Is it their interest to diffuse their code as much as possible in the education channels, and through that have it known in other markets too? Is the social impact the highest in the field of education? And/or does the diffusion of their code via education boost their business model to make profits via license fees in other markets? The answers to these questions determine their strategy!

Source: http://www.coloradd.net/

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Another example is G-Star

This brand is known for designing, producing and selling jeans worldwide. One of their key social innovations is that they developed sustainable jeans (‘our most sustainable jeans ever’ as they say). G-Star decided to make the process to produce this most sustainable jeans open source. How does this work for their business model? They distinguish themselves on their core: branding and design. The sustainable production process of the jeans fabric as raw material is not considered as the core they want to compete with. Instead they share their invention in order to enable their industry to produce and become more sustainable as a whole (this is a joint interest).

Source: https://www.g-star.com/nl_nl/sustainablejeans

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Another outcome of our research is that building an Innovation & IP strategy is dynamic

You can start at a specific box in the Matrix and over time feel the need to move in another direction (involve more or less parties and/or become more or less protective regarding IP). For example some companies start developing their IP in a closed setting and after some time they decide to reveal their IP to the public for several reasons. A famous case here is that of Tesla. Tesla started developing their electrical vehicle technology as classical R&D. After some time Elon Musk realized that the classical car manufacturers were his biggest competitor and that by revealing the IP to the public, knowledge would be shared amongst the electrical car manufacturers and the eco-system he wants to transform. The needed infrastructure would be scaled up in a shorter timeframe and cost could be shared amongst the parties in the upcoming electrical car industry.

https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you

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A last case is that of Fairphone

They develop and sell smartphones that aim to improve the industry and consumer approach to sustainable electronics. A Fairphone is designed for longevity, easy repair and modular upgrades and aims to provide software maintenance for five years. The phone also integrates recycled, and responsibly mined materials materials from sustainable supply chains that also strive for better working conditions with employee representation, income and growth opportunities for all. A Fairphone is sold not only with technical specifications, but also with fair specifications. The tech specs range between a mid and a high end mobile device, whereas the fair specs are the ones where the core innovation happens. This triggers the question of how to deal with the created IP, especially since the company’s mission boldly states that Fairphone aspires to motivate the industry to act more responsibly. The number of industry followers is one of the company’s core metrics by which it measures its success. Fairphone generally used their know-how and IP to provide a platform of co-creation and innovation on electronics fair specs. Using social innovation as a source for good, but also as your core business model raises a couple of interesting questions. What are the metrics for quantifying the value of social innovation? What IP can be attached to it? What is the level of openness required to achieve Fairphone’s mission that also makes business sense?
Raluca will tell more about these and other key factors influencing their strategy design at the Forum next week. Can’t wait to hear more!

https://www.fairphone.com/en/impact/

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In general there are no right or wrong answers to the questions raised. It’s all about creativity and context. What we can learn from the cases as described is that organizations engaging in social innovation need to carefully consider what their core is in order to have a robust business model in order to be able to achieve their social goals and how IP can be diffused to create a social impact or as a catalyst for their business model. There are many options in leveraging IP in order to boost social innovation and social business models.

Lastly, it is note-worthy to acknowledge that on a scale of companies being 100% commercial versus organizations being 100% social, many organizations operate in the zone between these extremes. This diversity is creating multiple dimensions where synergies are created and new business models can emerge. Also, the Matrix is not black and white. It is a tool that you can use creatively to define your strategy based on your specific context. As mentioned earlier, the most successful organizations use several strategies for their technology/product or service.

Source: Adapted from J.Kingston Venturesome, CAF Venturesome, and European Venture Philantropy Association (2015)
https://www.sosense.org/the-finance-paradoxon-for-social-enterprises/

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Sameness Sameness Sameness Sameness Sameness Sameness

 

While I worked already for many years in the contracting field, drafting and negotiating agreements on a daily basis, it was at a conference in London in May 2015, that I had the “You can only see it when you get it” experience. I was triggered:

• Why do all contracts look the same?
• Why are they difficult to understand?
• What is the impact on business relationships, particularly in terms of trust, opportunities, collaborative spirit, conflicts etc?
• Why don’t we do this differently? And if so, how?

For the first time, I heard about contract simplification, visualization, and about what I know today as legal design thinking. As an example, when the same contract was presented in two different ways – traditional versus simplified, I was stirred to think about this new way of contract drafting. Was this simplification possible? Could I apply it at work, in my daily business?

Inspired by what I learnt, Jerry Linnemeijer, the legal counsel at Airbus DS Netherlands, and I, started our legal design journey. We had immense support from experienced practitioners Robert Waller and Helena Haapio, who as external consultants, helped us with the design and the language simplification of our General Terms and Conditions.

At the time, I realized that another saying turned out to be true: ‘Simple can be harder than complex’ (Steve Jobs). It took us quite some time and effort to simplify and de-legalese our company’s terms and conditions, to present only the essence of a provision, and make them clear, and easy to understand for any type of organization or person we work with. We launched the renewed set of terms and conditions in January 2017, triggering a new way to look at terms and conditions within our eco-system and empowering our customers, suppliers and  employees to navigate the provisions with ease.

Unlike in the past, today, there are many practitioners and many examples to support you through your Legal Design journey. You will not be stepping into unchartered territory.   IACCM’s Contract Design Pattern Library is one of the best places to start. This is a grand effort of IACCM (the International Association of Commercial & Contracts Management) in cooperation with legal design pioneers Stefania Passera and Helena Haapio. Here you can find everything you need to know about designing better contracts with lots of illustrations and real life examples from organizations worldwide.

And the nice thing is: when you get it and you see it, you see opportunities all around you. It makes me happy that the trend of designing better contracts is picked up very quickly now by a lot of organizations. I’m quite sure it is now unstoppable!

© 2017 Stefania Passera. Used with permission.

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Tim’s doubts

Tim paces up and down his large office, thinking about the meeting he just had with James, an internationally renowned expert in the R&D team of his company. A crucial innovation project they have been working on has encountered significant delays. The team and the management are worried that they may not have satisfactory results to launch a new product in time, to stay ahead of their competition.

Tim thought about the way James sang praises about open innovation and how it could be a solution to their predicament. James proposed to openly cooperate with a few organizations who had the necessary expertise and even some additional budget; he said it could be a great boost to the project and that it could help catch up on lost time. Tim, who was already anxious, wondered if James was right. Could open innovation be the solution? James had dodged Tim’s questions:

“How do we protect the knowledge we have developed until now in open innovation? Would we risk losing our crown jewels to whom we cooperate with?”

Something about the way James avoided these questions made Tim uneasy. The innovation project that was started by his management and an eager team, was at the brink of falling through. Tim was looking out of the window hoping to find answers to the many questions that were stirring in his mind.

“There is a solution, but is it safe? Would our interests still be secure?
Would we be able to capture the value of our innovation, even if we work with another organization?
How can we make the best use of open innovation? I don’t want to squander the crown jewels of my company.”

Many organizations are in search of a sound Intellectual Property strategy
Research[1] shows that although many organizations are keen on cooperating with other organizations for the benefits it may give, many of them do not know how to deal optimally with their own knowledge and intellectual property in such collaborations.

These organizations do not have a robust strategy for Intellectual Property and therefore struggle in open innovation or collaborative innovation settings. They put their investments, team resources, knowledge, and ultimately their project at risk. While so, capturing the value of innovation – technically, legally, and/or commercially, becomes a challenge.

What if…
Elsewhere in the building, James muses about continuing his project. How nice it would be to collaborate with other experts to boost his project; if he would know for sure that they were the partner of choice! How comfortable it must be if he knew for sure how to protect their own interests in the knowledge and Intellectual Property that his company has heavily invested until now. How he wished he had the right answers to convince Tim to collaborate openly. Had he done that, he may have persuaded Tim to call the other organization sooner than later to discuss a potential collaboration. How wonderful it would be to catch up on time and deliver the results that everyone has been waiting for anxiously. James sees himself at the product launch… proud of his work! It is the moment he has been waiting for.

Craft your Innovation and Intellectual Property strategy!
You can get started on your strategy today! Even if it is not a grand scheme for your whole organization, you could start off for a project. A tailor made, simple to understand strategy, towards which your team too contributes, can be very beneficial for innovation, enabling you to get more out of partnerships, capture the value of the innovation, and in achieving commercial success.

Three tips for Tim and James… and you!

1. Considerwhat your organization’s core activities are and what they will be in the future. This exercise will help identify which knowledge/Intellectual Property is essential for your organization, what protection measures you can put in place, whether you would give others access to it, how you would own it. The knowledge or Intellectual Property, which is core to your business, is something over which you often want to have ownership and access (freedom to operate is key). Next to this, you can devise suitable business models for the knowledge/Intellectual Property or the product which will embody them.
2. Finda partner who complements the project and the goals of your organization, rather than a partner who may have an overlap in similar activities and/or scope, to avoid feeding a competitor or potential competitor.
3. Have open negotiations with your potential partner. Put your cards on the table regarding your interests, your organizational culture, who contributes what to the innovation, what model or technology is important for the innovation, etc. Collaborating is easier when there is mutual trust and transparency. This will enable the collaborators to each get what they want out of a cooperation – mutual benefits!

Conclusion
A robust strategy that is clear on what to do with crown jewels, how to select the right partner, how to collaborate etc., will go a long way in landing better working relationships and deals, ensuring a faster and smoother pace of work, and consequently success in Open Innovation.

Do you want to learn more about how you can co-innovate without squandering your crown jewels? Join one of our workshops!
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[1] Eindrapport Periodieke beleidsevaluatie Intellectuele Eigendomsbeleid, versie 1 mei 2018, available at https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/rapporten/2018/05/01/periodieke-beleidsevaluatie-intellectuele-eigendomsbeleid

 

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