Intellectual Property (IP) arises from the combination of human thought process and know-how in a unique way to confer some form of advantage to the owners of it. Often IP appears in the form of proprietary technology and as such is worth protecting and safeguarding in the same way as any other valuable corporate asset.
Monetizing IP is the process of deriving value from the development of the IP or technology in question. We refer to it as gaining a “return on innovation” and recognize there are a number of pathways to deriving such value in practice.
We know the the industries and the industries know us. We have successfully monetized IP which greatly enhanced the owners as well as the investment and credit communities.
There are many examples of IP owners in government, academia, and industry who have focused intently on the creation of the IP with comparatively little understanding of how to monetize it. Often this is characterized as “technology push” winning out over “market pull” in the early development of product line strategies and plans. This often leads to a situation of “stranded innovation” in which a significant investment has been made to engender novel IP, yet the IP is surrounded by an expertise vacuum that prevents the owners from deriving a reasonable return.
Principally there are two broad paths:
In each of these cases specific skills and abilities are required, and knowledge of IP management practices are needed to ensure real value is achieved by proceeding down either path. These skills include product management, business development, sales, marketing, quality assurance, documentation development, strategic partnering, planning, as well as the formalisms that apply to the patenting, trade marking, and licensing of the IP itself.
Sherwood Partners and agencyIP has traveled down all the paths over the past ten years to ensure clients gain a return on innovation. This includes everything from launching products to patenting pure “know-how” to leverage IP to the benefit of our clients.
