Business Power: Creating New Wealth from IP Assets

Chapter 2. Corporate IP Management in the Global Market

BILL COUGHLIN

So if you stand back and look at the way the world is changing, innovations in intellectual property management is something every company should be doing.

Key Points to Look For

• IP is the controlling factor in technological innovation and market position.

• The stakes are high as America’s competitive position is being challenged in the IP arena by Japan, China, and others.

• Sarbanes-Oxley for IP is here to stay. Not everybody has figured that out yet, and hopefully the pressures will not get any worse. Today the Ford VPs at the top of the house have to certify that they’ve actually designed disclosure controls and procedures and, in fact, evaluated those procedures.

• The strategic principles of IP management are important at Ford; it is even more important that you develop your own critical management practices.

• The measurement of Innovation has both an internal and an external component of value that makes it an ever more critical and complex part of executive decision making.

The Age of IP

I’m from Ford, and my little operation here (Ford Global Technologies) handles all of the intellectual property for Ford worldwide, so we see the entire gamut of issues and manage all aspects of it. The first point to make is that we are now in the “Age of IP.” My Techno-Trends graphic (Exhibit 2.1) is a little “tongue-in-cheek” in the ...