CENSIS white paper: Intellectual Property in Business

Intellectual Property in Business: IP basics, IP management, IP strategy
IP Strategy for Expanding Companies
and Corporates
16 IP strategy
The purpose of this part of the paper is to explore the
context for your IP strategy, namely your business
strategy and strategic management of resources.
However, before we move on to that interplay,
we should define what a strategy is, because this
determines the overall thinking later on about an IP
strategy.
Bigger picture
Strategy is generally understood as a roadmap
on how to achieve long-term goals. 58 It is about
understanding, and thriving from, the advantage(s) of
the business, not its weaknesses. Strategy development
includes defining challenges, setting objectives
and priorities, defining principles and policies, and
determining actions to achieve the goals and to
manage resources.
Richard Rumelt views strategy as a design where various
elements must be arranged, adjusted and coordinated
to achieve ‘a powerful competitive punch or problemsolving
effect’. 59
Michael D. Watkins explains business strategy in the
following way:
A business strategy is a set of guiding principles that,
when communicated and adopted in the organization,
generates a desired pattern of decision making. A
strategy is therefore about how people throughout
the organization should make decisions and allocate
resources in order accomplish key objectives. A good
strategy provides a clear roadmap, consisting of a set
of guiding principles or rules, that defines the actions
people in the business should take (and not take) and
the things they should prioritize (and not prioritize) to
achieve desired goals. 60
He also explains that a strategy, in a simplified way,
answers the question ‘how?’ and is aligned with other
elements of strategic direction that the company
leadership must decide on.
58
Many titles are available on the market, some good recommendations can be found, e.g., Lena Haydt, ‘8 Must-Read Books on Business Strategy’ (PM Library,
8 July 2020) accessed 2 December 2022.
59
Richard Rumelt, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy : The difference and why it matters (Profile Books, 2011) 4
60
Michael D. Watkins, ‘Demystifying Strategy: The What, Who, How, and Why’ (Harvard Business review, 10 September 2007)
accessed 2 December 2022
37