Managing Intellectual Property in Innovation Ecosystems

As large companies increasingly work with a variety of partners, including competitors, to manage disruptive innovation, managing intellectual property (IP) in innovation ecosystems becomes more complex. Phil Webster, Principal - Technology & Innovation Management at Arthur D. Little, shares his insights on the topic. Companies are creating ecosystems to work together and respond to threats from new sources of disruption and big global challenges. Through collaborations, corporations are able to create innovative solutions and survive disruptive pressures. Corporations should understand that IP is a strategic asset and should not just be seen as an administrative or reactive support function for filing patents. Ground rules and expectations should be defined upfront to manage IP integration while enabling flexibility in provisions around licensing terms, ownership, and assignments to whoever is best positioned to create value from the IP. Corporations should consider creating a special purpose vehicle to manage IP assets that can be independently managed by the different organizations involved. In addition, they should work with existing model agreements to simplify contractual negotiations. A model for multiparty collaboration becomes successful if it relies on trust, offers mutually shared benefits, is agile, and learns from other successful stories. Finally, Phil questioned the audience, what if we move people rather than patents, citing the UK Knowledge Transfer Partnerships as one such model that can inspire innovative collaborations.