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

Summary

How exactly can a company convert its intellectual assets—particularly intellectual property—into the greatest value over time? In our consulting careers the authors have been privileged to meet individuals who are clearly “ahead of their time” when it comes to realizing value from their companies’ innovations and ideas. As mentioned earlier, we have learned much by working with the members of the ICM Gathering. This book contains a collection of their learnings, along with success stories of other leading companies we have encountered in our work with clients who were striving to do a better job in leveraging and monetizing their intellectual assets.

Like Edison, the ICM Gathering practitioners are at the forefront of this value realization revolution. Many of the individuals we interviewed had a mandate to find value within a company that had already been mined for such gold. Most were expected to fail, but many succeeded. Like Thomas Edison, and like the companies he founded, the companies featured in this book exemplify the value of sustained, collective effort. It was this kind of effort that would eventually enable Edison to create and realize value from his innovations, showing that the place for value creation and realization is not only the laboratory but also the boardroom.

In the following pages, we will help you use a forward-looking yet methodical approach worthy of the Man from Menlo Park. For the remainder of this book, we authors, accompanied by the spirit ...