IPPro Patents Issue 049

Innovation Analysis
including an enhanced attorney-client relationship and satisfaction
that comes from helping a client’s business grow in value.
Invention and innovation are key drivers of client value
Technology-based client businesses operate in highly
competitive, knowledge-driven environments that are constantly
changing and evolving.
Accordingly, these clients must continually innovate to deliver
valuable new solutions to meet customers’ evolving needs and to
remain differentiated from competitors.
Tech-based clients, therefore, must strive for a relatively continuous
and vibrant flow of new ideas focused on serving strategic goals
to not only maintain the current competitive position, but also to
strategically grow revenue in new ways.
Problems often go unsolved, solutions are not properly focused on
the problem, solutions are not the best solution, the raw number
of ideas generated by the organisation is suboptimal. For example,
many organisations use brainstorming sessions to discover answers
to questions that, unfortunately but predictably, continue to remain
largely unanswered post-session.
Most of these brainstorming sessions are uncontrolled, producing
a large number of off-topic or non-feasible results, and are further
contaminated by various inventive model elements that are
counterproductive, thus producing suboptimal results.
A purposeful innovation session can help patent counsel
address some of the problems with clients’ innovation systems.
The session may be executed, with patent counsel preparation
and facilitation, with minimal expense, time commitment and
disruption to the organisation.
All tech-based businesses understand this, and many of those
businesses strive for a culture of innovation, but an unfortunately
large number fail to reach full innovative potential.
Some of the key reasons for these innovation shortcomings include:
Our experience facilitating numerous sessions is that they
consistently provide both immediate and long-term value measured
by: specific focus targeting; near- to mid-term commercial potential;
the sheer volume of ideas generated; and training in an optimised
innovation process.
A general deficit of organisational knowledge of optimal
inventive processes.
Innovation is neither intentional nor purposeful, with invention
instead occurring primarily on an ad hoc basis, with
innovation becoming lost in the chaos of pressing day-to-day
job responsibilities.
Invention and innovation is generally expected only of technical
personnel with little to no input sought from non-technical
personnel, many of whom are customer-facing and may
understand customer wants and needs much better than
technical personnel, in some cases.
A resulting inability to fully unlock and realise the full inventive
potential of inventors and to effectively create a culture of
creativity and innovation throughout the organisation to ensure
a continuous stream of fresh ideas with maximum volume and
optimised focus.
How can patent counsel help correct these deficiencies? The answer
is not as difficult, disruptive or time-intensive as it may seem, and
patent counsel plays a leading role in the solution.
The role of patent counsel as innovation stimulator
Sessions executed over the years consistently produce a large
volume of ideas in a very short timeframe, ranging between 50
concepts to 200 concepts in a typical four to six-hour session.
The following are examples from an actual session:
The session was executed to improve a relatively old ‘known’
portion of a medical device system. Because of the age of the
related art, and the absence of new concepts, the client was
pessimistic that anything of value would be produced, but
nonetheless agreed to do the session.
The session produced 75 potentially patentable concepts,
impressive enough for a subsystem considered ‘old’. But more
significantly, and of much more value to the client, 25 of the
concepts were commercialisable in the short term, while 25 more
concepts were commercialisable in the medium term.
The client now engages in regular sessions covering various
aspects of the overall system as well as exploration of new
strategic directions.
A successful purposeful innovation session comprises, among other
things, the following key characteristics:
First, the client should be introduced to the potential power of
purposefully focusing on new idea generation to solve existing issues,
meet customer needs, and/or explore new strategic areas.
While this may sound like what the client currently expects and
requires from the inventors, the actual result is almost always less
than optimal.
Patent counsel provides an overview of the shortcomings of the
current inventive model and why it does not produce optimal
results. Discussion of elements of an optimal inventive model is
included with supporting research summary.
Participant-inventors receive both classroom-style and
experiential training that can be incorporated into daily routines,
increasing invention frequency and capture.
13 IPPro Patents www.ippropatents.com