Surprising Research on Corporate Intellectual Capital Management

IAM Magazine recently published an article that I wrote with Peder Hofman-Bang of Intellectual Capital Sweden entitled The Weakest Link in Corporate Intellectual Asset Management.

The article examined the combined results of over 430 intellectual capital ratings that have been performed using the IC Rating tool. It found that the ratings of the companies’ IC portfolios and the strength of their IC management shook out as follows (from strongest to weakest): Read more

Who is in Charge of IP and IC?

I have really enjoyed getting to know Andrew Watson and Jordan Hatcher at ipVA over the last few months. I met with Jordan on my recent trip to London and he sent me a new article that he and Andrew wrote called Fix Your Broken IP Structures from www.managingip.com.

The article makes a case for a position called the Chief Intellectual Property Officer (CIPO) who is outside the legal department. They use color-based Insights Discovery Learning System to look at the personalities of different departments. Legal departments, they assert, are blue (accurate, ordered and cautious), not the red traits that are needed to exploit IP (decisive, risk taking and results driven). This means that the CIPO would need to be in the sales or strategy areas. It’s a compelling case. Read more

IP and IC — a strategy or the strategy?

I had a really interesting exchange a couple weeks ago on the Tangible IP blog with Andrew Watson and Jordan Hatcher.

The question was: How to define “intellectual property strategy?” By the end, Andrew wrote:

The challenge I see though is that at some point along the scale of how wide the definition is drawn, one ends up almost redefining the business, or needing to turn it upside down to have the impact one wants to have. Few CEOs we know would buy that. So at least for now, we are drawing the box around the bits of intangibles (mainly innovation culture and placing proper systems around how the outputs from that are recognised and protected) that a CEO new to this area can comprehend.

I have been holding myself back on this one. I wasn’t going to answer him. Don’t want to mess with CEO’s. But I couldn’t help myself. So here goes:

I know that few CEO’s are ready or willing to face the fact. But the truth is that the drivers of almost every business today are intangible knowledge assets (which may or may not have legal protection and become IP). Eventually, we will have to redefine the business.