IP P®OSPE©TIVE

Here is a talking point that every IP strategist and professional in the IP monetization business has been waiting to put in their arsenal of persuasion efforts:  MIT agrees.  I was put on to this short piece from the MIT News Online by Andrew Watson at ipVA.  The piece discusses the views of MIT Sloan School of Management Senior Lecturer Professor Joseph Hadzima Jr., which are quite in line with all that IP Prospective stands for.  In short, quality IP and an efficient IP management strategy can directly correlate into new financing and monetization options, as well as increased shareholder value.  Take the following quotes from Professor Hadzima (as I put them in my arsenal of talking points):

“The future winners will be those companies that used the rough times to put together intellectual property strategies that support their broader business strategies. In tough times, people have to make more focused investment decisions, which means some firms cut back on their intellectual property investments. Unfortunately, those companies that are not strategic in this process can undercut the foundation of future growth. Companies that are not paying attention to intellectual property may very well find it more difficult to raise capital than those that are paying attention to it.” - Professor Joseph Hadzima Jr., MIT Sloan School of Management, MIT News

Although the piece does not go on to discuss these concepts with the depth of coverage that you might expect from MIT, it is a nice supplement to the seminar presentation I gave to an In-House Corporate Counsel Conference two weeks ago.  In that presentation, I discussed IP monetization and introduced to many unknowing ears the ways in which IP can be turned into a commodized asset.  But it wasn’t until I mentioned the correlation between shareholder value and quality intellectual property that a few eyebrows raised and questions started to be asked.  I have discussed this correlation previously on IP Prospective HERE and HERE, among other posts.  To get the point across quickly with the kind of empirical data that company executives need to believe new concepts which may be foreign to them, one need only point to the performance history of the OT 300 Patent Index and other IP-focused investment products and indexes that have been created by Michael Freidman and his Ocean Tomo team.  The performance history speaks for itself, and more information can be found HERE.