IP Strategy: The 4 Signs You're Nailing It

The best-placed IP strategies to cope with new tech like AI, IoT and blockchain follow four key principles. Use our benchmarking tool to see how your company compares against the competition.

No market is safe from disruption by new technology.

An unprecedented breadth of innovations is lowering barriers to entry that allowed leaders in mature markets to stay ahead, safe in the knowledge they had the resources, supply chains and brand names to remain competitive.

Artificial intelligence (AI), connectivity (including Internet of Things) and blockchain are among the long list of innovations that are all changing the world, right now.

They are allowing new entrants to shake up old markets, digitising services, jobs and habits and turning more and more aspects of our lives into data points for software to record and analyse.

If there is one constant amid this chaos, this destabilisation of the old guard, it is intellectual property (IP). Technological disruption and IP are bedfellows - you will rarely see one without the other.

And the febrile period of disruption means IP is more valuable than ever.

The ability to monopolise and leverage an idea is the disrupted world's currency exchange. It is how deals will be made, market share will be kept, and new markets entered.

How do you compare?

How do you know if your company's IP strategy can meet these challenges?

Every company's situation is different, and its IP plan should reflect that, but here are four principles that every business leader should factor in.

Principle 1: Tech disruption

How well does your business understand the most influential disruptors? Which of them, if any, are you investing in? And are you paying attention to the opportunities they provide you and your competitors?

Principle 2: IP culture

To mitigate risk and play an active...