One of the key issues for entrepreneurs and innovation-driven businesses is how to secure the most important and commercially most interesting bearing points during their innovative processes. The big question is how to optimise and structure innovation.
- As advisors to entrepreneurs and innovators, we are no longer met by a mere demand for advising them whether a product should be protected by a patent, trademark or design, explains Mikael Tranekær Christensen, head of Plougmann & Vingtoft’s Technology & Software team. – Increasingly, we are asked to couple their business strategy with the market situation and patent potential in one integrated intelligence base to be used for developing new products.
No doubt those days are over, when you could just sit down and wait for the next good idea to surface, says Steen Iver Andersen, group leader at Plougmann & Vingtoft in Aarhus. –Today companies need to actively steer their innovation and idea development towards the right technologies, the most attractive markets and products and, once there, ensure that their company gets the right positioning. This is where intellectual property consulting can generate big value for the customers.
The pervasive idea is that patenting and protecting your innovation should be worth your while.
That requires the full picture of every single idea to be drawn up already at the initial idea evaluation stage:
• What is the idea’s business potential?
• Does it fit in with the company’s strategy?
• Which technologies are available on the market?
• Are there existing intellectual property rights?
• Is it possible to obtain protection by patent, trademark or design, or to otherwise protect the idea against competition?
- International companies such as B&O, Apple and Nokia have shifted their basic business focus. They no longer focus on the physical product, but instead they focus on the idea, e.g. the design or user-friendliness, of the end-product, explains Mikael Tranekær Christensen. – They do this by focusing on what they do best based on an in-depth knowledge of new technological developments, market demand and competition. And so far they have been very successful in managing their innovation through initial idea evaluation, focusing on deciding what to put their stake on and in which ideas to invest time and money, says Mikael.
Innovation management
