Most us are well aware at this stage of the Covid crisis that we should “Never let a good crisis go to waste”. Technology leaders and innovators ought to take the Covid “opportunity” to innovate, and rapidly.

From my experience with multiple tech startups in Israel, we see the willingness and the ability to innovate fast, but we are often missing the consciousness to look for the IP in the innovation.

Let me re-iterate – IP and Innovation are not synonymous. Whereas innovation most likely will create new Intellectual Property (IP), the creation of this new IP is not a sufficient justification for one’s Return on Investment in such a project. I prefer to describe IP, for practical purposes, as not the property so much as the asset behind the property, the value of the property. Therefore, when an innovator chooses to develop a better solution that the world needs, they also need a consciousness to seek inside their innovation that which can be monetized, commercialized and valued. It is in these business driving elements of the innovation where these great entrepreneurs can plant the seeds for both harvesting the fruits of their innovation, and generating new seeds for future growth.

In our COVID context, the plethora of urgent needs has generated a whirlwind of opportunities for innovators to solve new problems and find breakthrough solutions. These innovators need to understand the IP game and play is smartly. And they need to understand how the global IP system can be, must be, used to leverage their innovations.

Danny Marti, former White House Chief of IP Enforcement and vice chairman of the Global Innovation Policy Center, recently commented in a recent livestream presentation that “Businesses place expensive bets on the future, which is fraught with risk ….. Rapid response requires confidence in an intellectual property system that works and policy that supports business.”  

Smart IP Consciousness and Confidence seem to be necessary to leverage your IP for business growth.

To the Future!

Yaron Damelin
Strategic IP Management Consulting