pursue excellence - strategic review

Withholding important information from legal advisers (No. 45 in our list of IP mistakes)

March 22, 2012 05:49

Some years ago I was discussing the structural features required in a new IP management system we were considering purchasing with my IT manager. We were looking at different interactive modules for docketing, products, agreements etc. After agreeing on the “must haves” and the “nice to haves”, my...

Become Mired in the Day-to-Day (No. 21 in our list of IP mistakes)

October 04, 2011 06:39

“It’s easy to put your head down and just work on what you think needs to be done. It’s a lot harder to put your head up and ask why.” (‘Rework’ by J Fried and D H Hansson) Putting first things first is a universally identified businesses need. However, given the large amount of events...

Benchmarking is not strategy

August 25, 2011 05:50

Why do people benchmark their efforts against others?  Mostly to feel safe that they’re doing the same or better than their competitors. That’s a poor substitute for strategy. I’ve written before about Realized Strategy – what you actually did, not what you planned to do.  The problem is that when...

How to be a better IP Strategist

August 23, 2011 07:21

Listen to, understand and be effective in dealing with people.  It’s that simple.  The most effective people working on IP Strategy within organisations are very clever at the ‘soft’ stuff.  They can read the political currents, they listen to and understand people, and they are extremely effective...

An Elephant in the Room?

August 04, 2011 06:00

In his book Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton Christensen described how great companies may choose a path to their own demise by following a seemingly sound logic of focusing on their best customers.  They do so when they progressively cede lower value parts of their markets to companies that introduced...