Inventors ยป Targeted Programs


Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at PhotobucketIn addition to or instead of the comprehensive Innovation Roadmap, Innovationedge can also undertake a variety of projects aimed at strengthening intellectual assets or IA systems in specific areas of need.

Protecting Business Method Innovations

Many corporations focus their intellectual asset efforts on pursuit of traditional patents for materials, products, and methods of manufacturing. However, some of the most important innovations in many companies reside in other areas and may be left unnoticed and unprotected by those guiding patenting efforts.

There is an increasing need for companies to recognize and protect innovations in “business method” areas such as logistics, ERP systems, marketing research techniques, telecommunications, business models, distribution channels, process control and quality systems and data mining strategies.

Patent applications in many of these areas may fall outside of Class 705 in the US, where “business method patent” applications face difficult challenges in prosecution, although even the difficulties of obtaining a pure “business method patent” within Class 705 can be worthwhile for many inventions.

In addition to patents, you can and should protect your business method innovations with a variety of other approaches, such as publications, strategic partnerships with contractual agreements, digital intellectual assets, and other tools to help protect your innovations.

Innovationedge can help corporations advance business method IA strategy by

  • Implementing your processes to identify and protect business method innovations
  • forming a business method IA review board
  • training of groups in understanding business method opportunities
  • mining selected groups for business method innovations that we can help protect
  • developing a business method IA strategy for a particular project or business area

    In these projects, Innovationedge draws on years of experience in pursuing radical and disruptive innovation in areas such as RFID technology, logistics, Enterprise software systems, virtual reality applications, and many other fields.

    Open Innovation and Enhanced External Partnerships

    Leveraging the power of external alliances through open innovation requires attention to internal systems for proper synergy between internal and external capabilities. In spite of frequent lip-service to open innovation from many companies, innovation frameworks inside the corporation play a critical role in determining whether open innovation opportunities are actually realized or not.

    We explore the health of your collaborative efforts in any area of interest, whether its a specific business unit or development project. We’ll show you recommendations for substantial improvement, including the identification of specific prospective partners that you should consider for further collaboration and innovation. In diagnosing the your status, we examine open innovation practices, the health of external relationships, the value being provided by the relationships, the systemic factors that may be limiting realization of value from the relationships and the impact of intellectual assets.

    To help clarify relationship issues, we also conduct a Value Network exercise around the project or business unit to identify transactions of tangibles and intangibles that are involved. We add our proprietary tools for identifying the impact of intellectual assets on each of the critical relationships mapped. The analysis will point to threats that may impede effective partnerships, opportunities to strengthen partnerships, and efforts that should be pursued to ensure that the relationship can provide competitive advantage.

    We then build on the insights obtained, coupled with knowledge of your business plans and corporate needs to identify specific partners for further growth.