How an innovation and IP value-chain view can transform portfolio value

I recently authored an article in IAM Magazine, entitled “How an innovation and IP value-chain view can transform portfolio value“. I looked at how viewing an IP portfolio from the value chain of a business can identify gaps and opportunities for business and IP executives.   Overall, looking at the value chain from the perspective of both depth and breadth gives a more cohesive view of the landscape of the actual IP and innovation environment.

“An innovation-based decision about what to continue to invest in must be made in the context of the intellectual property and the business ecosystem”

The article goes into detail on how this depth and breadth view of the value chain give business and IP insights to a management team.    For example, using IoT as a case study, we are able to see that the highest proportion of patents is in the component side of the value chain. This suggests that interoperability via communications is well protected and ventures should develop an IP position accordingly.  However, it also suggests that interoperability protection via IoT systems is extremely unbalanced, with few filings around system-level customer offerings

With vendors pushing innovations to interoperability to achieve faster market adoption (estimated 40% of the IoT value is in interoperability), there seems to be a disconnect with the amount of intellectual property filed at the solution end of the value chain (only 5%). This view does not even fully consider the convergence of segments that will come from traditional ventures in other sectors. For example, the connected car has traditional suppliers such as Ford and Continental filing IP registrations alongside other IoT-savvy vendors such as Alphabet, Apple and other selected telecommunications companies.

There is additional IoT patent landscape data in the article, and is available here for download.