Edison in the Boardroom Revisited: How Leading Companies Realize Value from Their Intellectual Property, Second Edition

What Level Four Companies Are Trying to Accomplish

Companies at Level Four have learned that the very ownership of IP brings with it a set of risks that must be balanced against the IP’s potential rewards. Level Four companies begin to manage their IP more holistically, now being able to identify all or almost all of the compromises between IP, the dollar costs of IP, the risks of IP ownership, the revenue opportunities from IP, and the business benefits available from IP. At this level, companies typically want to accomplish two things:

1. Understand and capitalize upon the relationship between invention and innovation for the enterprise.

2. Help quantify the IP risk/reward trade-offs resulting from ownership of the organization’s intellectual property.

At Level Four, companies are involved with the same component functions of the IP Management System, as are companies at Level Three. The difference is that at Level Four, the focus is at a greater degree of depth (see Figure 6.2).

Figure 6.2 The IP Management System Showing Activities and Decisions Applicable to Level Four