Timefor Business Students to Get an IP Education

that implies about my company’s businessand how intellectual property is central tohow we create and deliver value.

“Well, the position is licensing of non-core technology,” he said. “You don’t dothat, then?”

“No,” I replied. “We are a disciplinedcompany. We don’t typically develop non-core technology. But the opportunity ismuch greater for your client with strategicIP management than it ever will be withlicensing of non-core technology,” I said -pedantically, I suppose. I knew the companyhe was representing, and I know a couple ofpeople in that company, who have given mean insider’s view as to how it operates withregard to intellectual property. I thereforecould say what I said with confidence.

“Well,” he said, “we’ll keep your resuméon file in case anything in your area comesup.”

What intrigues me about thisconversation is this: the presumption on thehead hunter’s part was that IP specialists -licensing people in particular - are involvedin what for most product companies is non-strategic work.

Strategic and non-coreOh, it’s true that patent licensing can bestrategic. And it definitely is for somecompanies, in some industries. When aproduct company uses patent licensing toadd substantially and regularly to its bottomline, the work is certainly strategic. Or whenit uses patent licensing to build bridges oralliances with other companies or uses it incross-licensing to reduce the possibility ofdestructive litigation, the work is strategic.

Of course, patent licensing can be amethod by which one defends one’s productand market position, and when this is themotive, the work is definitely strategic aswell. Or patent licensing can be about

I received a call from a head hunter a fewmonths ago - a fellow at a top-10 executivesearch firm who specialises in finding IPpeople (and by “IP”, I do mean IP in itsbroadest sense. I mean patents, software,data, instructions, factory layouts, bills ofmaterial, design documentation,specifications, manuals, training materials,interface control documents, processes,know-how, any copyrighted material,trademarks and so forth). The call wasremarkable for the lack of awareness itrevealed, but it was a lack of awareness thatI find exists to some extent both inside andoutside the IP bubble. So it might makesense to talk about it.

I regarded the call as suggestive of aproblem that we have in IP management - aproblem we have with the perception of therole of IP management. Here is what thefellow said, after skimming my resumé: “Itisn’t very clear what you do. Which is it:licensing of non-core technology or patentlicensing?”

“Neither,” I responded. “I’m involvedwith IP transactions in the normal course ofour business. We do 2,000 to 3,000substantive IP transactions per year. And Ido a host of other things related to IPstrategy, IP policy and organisational andbusiness model change around IP.” Then Iexpanded a bit on what that means, what

Many subjects are taught atbusiness schools, but intellectualproperty is not usually one of them.Until that changes, widespreadexecutive ignorance of what IP is allabout is bound to continue

It’s time for businessstudents to get an IPeducation

Intellectual Asset Management July/August 2012 103www.iam-magazine.com

Business school brief

By Bill Elkington

IAM is the Official Strategic Media Partner of LES (USA & Canada). As part of thiswide-ranging cooperation agreement, bothparties work together to provide thoughtleadership relating to the strategic creationof value from intellectual property. With thisin mind, every issue of IAM features anexclusive article written by an LES memberor members that focuses on an IP valuecreation issue. The content and authorshipof the article is always agreed in advancewith the IAM editorial team and is subject to the same editing process as all otherarticles published in the magazine. Thework and the opinions of the author(s) arepersonal to the author(s) and do notrepresent those of LES (USA & Canada).

www.iam-magazine.com104 Intellectual Asset Management July/August 2012


perhaps the start-up will be acquired by theoriginating company and integrated into anexisting P&L centre or placed in one createdespecially for the now-mature technologyand associated products.

Another valid strategic context forlicensing non-core technology is theretention of high-quality research talent.Researchers are encouraged to remain withthe company as their technology is licensedout because it goes somewhere, rather thannowhere. If their technology is placed on theshelf, many technologists becomediscouraged and leave for a company thatthey think will be more interested in takingtheir work into products and into themarketplace.

But these latter strategic approaches tolicensing of non-core technology suggest anIP strategy and policy function. Theysuggest something more than I heard thehead hunter saying - roles that are focusedon something other than hunting downprospects and negotiating patent and non-core technology licences.

Of course, IP management is muchbroader than the head hunter’s concept ofan IP practitioner. It involves corporate

promoting worldwide technology standards,where cooperation among competitors isessential for interoperability purposes. Andthis is, of course, strategic.

But in most product companies, in mostindustries, today, naked patent licensing isan attempt to add opportunistically to thebottom line. Because most companies arenot in the patent business and not inpatent-intensive industries, but rather innon-patent-intensive product businesses,their patent portfolios do not dominate andare not designed to dominate a particularfield. And so their patent portfolios are onlysubstantial enough to support a licensingprogramme that periodically addssomething to the bottom line.

And of course, the very definition oflicensing non-core technology is that it isnon-strategic. As a colleague of mine hassuggested, licensing of non-core technologymay be part of a strategic effort tosubstantially enhance profits. Or it may bepart of a strategy to let entrepreneurs testthe market, first, with technology that isn’treadily picked up by a company’s existingprofit and loss (P&L) centres. Once anentrepreneur can demonstrate success,

The panellists in this issue’s LES roundtableare as follows:

• Lita Nelsen is the director of theTechnology Licensing Office at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT), where she has been since 1986.Her office manages over 500 newinventions, negotiates over 100 licencesand launches over 20 new companieseach year. Nelsen earned her BS and MSdegrees in chemical engineering from MITand an MS in management from MIT as aSloan fellow. Prior to joining the MITTechnology Licensing Office, she spent20 years in industry, primarily in the fieldsof membrane separations, medicaldevices and biotechnology. Nelsen wasthe 1992 president of the Association ofUniversity Technology Managers, servesas IP adviser to the International AIDSVaccine Initiative and is a founding andcurrent board member of the Centre forManagement of Intellectual Property inHealth Research.

• Mario Benassi is professor inmanagement and business administrationin the Department of Economics,Business and Statistics at the Universityof Milan. He teaches economics of

innovation and business planning, and isdean of the business history andmanagement PhD programme. His mainresearch interests are organisationalmodularisation, new organisational formsand business models, and managementof IP rights. Benassi has published inseveral international journals, includingOrganization Science, R&D Management,Journal of Management and Governance,Journal of Market Focused Research andInternational Review of Sociology.

• Larry Cox is an associate professor ofentrepreneurship at PepperdineUniversity’s Graziadio School ofBusiness and Management. Cox hasdirected entrepreneurship centres at BallState University and the University ofWisconsin-Madison. Prior to this, he wasthe director of research at the EwingMarion Kauffman Foundation in KansasCity, Missouri. His personal researchinterests include the impact ofentrepreneurship education and thecreative processes of entrepreneurs. Anaward-winning educator, Cox especiallyenjoys helping young entrepreneurs andis an inspiring speaker and seminarleader.

Meet the participants



“we”, I mean IP management people in IPowner organisations. You and me.

We need to work with our colleagues -however distant - in business schoolsaround the world to improve the IPeducation of the generalists that thosebusiness schools are instructing.

First, we need to teach students that IPmanagement is a strategic activity, worthyof considerable time and attention at alllevels of leadership in most businessestoday. Second, we need to fundamentallyimprove the IP content in businesseducation so that our future leaders have abasic understanding of IP law, IP value, IPstrategy and IP issues as they relate toproduct-based businesses.

Why? As we all know, most of thevaluable assets that we work with in mostenterprises today are intangible. So it’simportant for generalists to be educated inthe management of intangible assets, if theyhope to manage an IP-owning enterprisesuccessfully in the future.

How do we do it? I don’t know. That’swhy I have asked a few people who are muchsmarter than I am to help us think aboutthis exceptionally important topic. I metand got to know Lita Nelsen and MarioBenassi at LES IP100 Executive Forumevents over the past year. And I met and gotto know several people involved with LarryCox and his entrepreneurship programme atPepperdine at the LES (USA and Canada)winter meeting in February of this year.Here’s what they had to say on this matter.

Why don’t most business leadersunderstand the basics about intellectualproperty? And by “the basics”, I meanthe basic IP protections provided by IPlaw and contract law, the basics about IPvalue and how IP valuation isdetermined, and the basics about IPstrategy.

Lita Nelsen (LN): The majority of businessleaders did not come up through thetechnical route (science or engineering) andwere not exposed to IP concepts early intheir careers. Even many who started asengineers left the patenting to “the lawyers”.And only recently (outside of thepharmaceutical industry) has intellectualproperty become as important acompetitive tool as it is today recognised tobe.

Mario Benassi (MB): There are severalreasons, at least in Europe: • Future leaders do not study intellectual

property in their education

policy and strategy focused on the role of IPin the company’s business, integrated intothe company’s business strategy andbusiness processes.

For example, here at Rockwell Collins, Iam involved with a variety of planning,decision-making, education, process designand development, and organisational changemanagement activities related tointellectual property, some of which follow:• Business model innovation related to

moving from manufacturing tolicensing.

• Business model change to supplysoftware and information as services.

• IP transaction process design.• Development of standard valuation

approaches for regular IP transactions. • Strategy for protecting our intellectual

property when it is licensed to jointventures in emerging markets (patentsbeing only one of many approaches).

• IP valuation and IP agreement terms andconditions training.

• Development of processes to control theuse of third-party intellectual property.

• Policing IP misuse and infringement ofRockwell Collins’ intellectual property.

• Open innovation transaction strategywhen early-stage technology is involved.

• Patent budgeting, patent portfoliostructuring and patent portfolio qualityassessments.

And I know that there are many peoplein the IP bubble doing a wide variety of IP-related management tasks - a wider varietythan those few listed above. So for the “IPspecialist” head hunter to assume that Ieither licensed patents or licensed non-coretechnology demonstrates a profound lack ofunderstanding of what really happens andwhat many people really do when theirresponsibilities include licensing.

Back to schoolShortly after my encounter with the headhunter, a second significant but notuncommon kind of conversation happened.This conversation took place in Phoenix,Arizona, at the IP100 Executive Forum lastJanuary. I was chatting with a few friends -senior IP people from for-profitcorporations - at a networking reception,and every one of them commented thatbusiness leaders in their companies werelargely ignorant about the basics ofintellectual property.

I came out of that IP100 ExecutiveForum - and out of the conversation withthe head hunter - convinced that we need todo something dramatically different. And by

Lita Nelsen, director of the TechnologyLicensing Office at the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology“IP valuation should be a separate coursebecause of its diversity and complexity,and may or may not be needed for abusiness person, depending on thebusiness”



(undergraduate and graduate); nor dothey meet IP issues at the beginning oftheir careers. As a consequence, theytend to believe that intellectual propertyis useless (a self-reinforcing prophecy).

• Shareholders do not see the potential ofintellectual property and do not requiretop managers to be adequately prepared.

• IP issues are supposed to be legal, notbusiness issues. Lawyers and paralegalsmust be super knowledgeable aboutthem, not managers.

Larry Cox (LC): From my perspective, thereare three key issues:• Specialisation within domains (ie,

management, law and engineering)precludes a more holistic approach tobusiness education.

• Entrepreneurship programmes (and nowinnovation curricula) are helpful, butfaculties are trained in traditionaldomains. There are simply not enoughfaculty graduating from these types ofcross-disciplinary programmes.However, this “Golden Triangle” of law,technology and management is exactlythe typical business environment. Weare throwing students into this typeof business environment after we havedomain-trained them in areas ofspecialties.

• There is a mind set that intellectualproperty should be the domain of lawand no other field. Should it be theexclusive domain of the law school?

You would think that with innovationbeing promoted as the source ofdifferentiated advantage around theworld, the highly visible patent warsbeing waged today, the sale of the Nortelpatents for billions of dollars and highlyvisible Wall Street Journal articles on theremarkable and historic transfer ofWestern intellectual property to China,for example, we would have students andbusiness leaders and IP-savvy people ofall sorts clamouring for significant IPcontent to be added to businesseducation programmes, at both theundergraduate and graduate levels. Whydoesn’t this seem to be happening?

LN: Most business schools do not havefaculty who understand intellectualproperty (that’s left to the law schools -which don’t understand business!). As forthe students, since they’ve not been taughtthe importance of intellectual property, theydon’t know what they don’t know. Inaddition, many schools that think “student

entrepreneurship” are thinking software (thenext Facebook) and are taught by theircomputer science faculty (often in error)that “patents aren’t important in software;open source is the key”. Other, non-technical schools think in terms of“marketing” and “distribution channels” askey parts of business strategy, with the onlyimportant intellectual property beingtrademarks (brands).

MB: In order to teach new programmes andnew content, you need new professionals.However, building new professionals andnew professors who are knowledgeableabout IP issues takes time. Also considerthat universities are conservativeinstitutions. They open up to new content ifand only if this seems mandatory (ie,demand for specific content needs to bevery high).

LC: “We teach what we know” - or mostoften, what we have been trained to know.Thus, we need to have cross-disciplinarycurricula. For example, we should beteaching marketing to engineering studentsor the trial and error concept of research tobusiness students, who are currently trainedto have only one answer to an accounting orfinance question. Strategic management iscurrently taught in schools of business,project management in colleges ofengineering and intellectual property in lawschools. What are needed are innovationcurricula (not just a single course) thatteach creativity, invention and humanbehaviour/psychology. The three key areasare not law, engineering and management somuch as cognition, creativity andcommercialisation.

If business management degreeprogrammes should have increased (orsome) IP management content, whatsort of content should that be? Shouldthe emphasis be on IP law, IP valuation,IP transactions, IP strategy orsomething else?

LN: Some IP law is important, but it shouldnot take a full semester. In patents, forexample, understanding what a patentcovers (and doesn’t cover) and thedisclosure rules that bar patents should beenough. The business person need notknow what “102(b)” is. Trade secret law iscritical in some businesses, and brands andtrademarks are important in others. In thesoftware industry, copyright law isimportant, and some overview of howcopyright laws have been interpreted in the

Mario Benassi, professor in managementand business administration at theUniversity of Milan“The more that IP topics are perceived asspecific and specialised, the less popularand sellable they become”



1980s, the trend towards PCs (ie,inexpensive computing with a huge globalmarket) and software requiring little or nocapital investment opened up new marketsfor products developed and sold by smallbusinesses, start-ups and spin-offs. Twentyyears later, the model of innovationoccurring in these types of environmentrequired that small players defendthemselves against corporate giants with IPprotection and creative strategies designedto capture/convert new users to newapplications. Without understanding howbusiness strategy and IP strategy are related,companies will be lost or further left behind.

What effect would the existence of acredible, business-oriented IPmanagement textbook have on thewillingness of business schools toincorporate meaningful IP content intotheir curricula?

LN: I think it would be very important.Devising a curriculum for such a multi-faceted field is not trivial. A textbook wouldhelp to drive consensus on what an IPmanagement course should be.Think about which type of professor teachesan IP management course – law, corporate,strategy, finance, entrepreneurship? Wouldthe professor be a scholar who writes journalarticles in his or her specialty, or a professorof practice (often adjunct)?

MB: I think that a textbook would be veryeffective, to the extent that it is simple,clear and insightful. I am working in thatdirection, as I am writing a textbook inItalian for my students on management ofinnovation.

LC: The effect of a credible, business-oriented IP management textbook would betremendous. Indeed, as most books onlytouch upon some aspect of business-oriented IP management, any credible andcomprehensive book covering this subjectmatter is strongly needed. Althoughtextbooks are only one part of the solution;students also need hands-on courses (eg,the Pepperdine 15X IP Monetisation Processinitiated at Pepperdine University), wherelearning is experiential.

What would a credible, business-oriented IP management textbook looklike? What would its subject matter be?What areas should it cover?

LN: I refer you to my answer to thequestion on IP management content in

software industry would be very helpful.How and where intellectual property is

important in the competitive landscapewhen you are forming a business is probablythe most important. Some concept of theelements of a licence agreement isimportant. IP strategy, briefly covered, isimportant. I believe that IP valuation shouldbe a separate course because of its diversityand complexity, and may or may not beneeded for a business person, depending onthe business (licensing or M&A versus anoperating business).

MB: There is not an easy answer. My twocents is that the more that IP topics areperceived as specific and specialised, theless popular and sellable they become.Embedding intellectual property in thevarious topics of a classic MBA programmeis probably the correct strategy.

LC: I think that the answer is a little ofeach. We might call it IP commercialisation– a curriculum about how to take a newproduct or service from the source ofinvention, vet its commercial use and value-add, and strategise how to price andposition it in the marketplace.

Is it important for students inuniversity business management degreeprogrammes to wrestle with the issue ofhow business strategy and IP strategyare related? If so, why?

LN: Yes - depending on the type ofbusiness. One can contrast pharmaceuticalswith businesses where quick time to marketand market share are the major ways tocompete and intellectual property may belargely irrelevant. Or advertising, wherebrand intellectual property is the mostimportant (what is Coca-Cola without thebrand? Just brown fizzy water whose secretrecipe can readily be decoded with modernanalytical technology).

MB: I’d say, not so important. Intellectualproperty comes into the picture only as asource of examples (eg, settlement oftransaction, bundling of services).

LC: Yes, it is important for students inuniversity business management degreeprogrammes to wrestle with the issue ofhow business strategy and IP strategy arerelated. This is the current businessenvironment. It used to be the case thatinvention occurred in university labs orcorporate labs, both of which possessed vastresources (eg, AT&T labs). However, by the

Larry Cox, associate professor ofentrepreneurship at Pepperdine University“It is important for students in universitybusiness management degreeprogrammes to wrestle with the issue ofhow business strategy and IP strategy arerelated”



MB: Case studies would have a greatimpact. Bear in mind that without casestudies, most MBA programmes arereluctant to absorb new topics. However,case studies ought to be encapsulated in arigorous theoretical and conceptualframework. If not, they would be interpretedas secondary and not crucial topics.

LC: In the business school, IP-orientedbusiness cases might be used inentrepreneurship courses, productdevelopment courses (usually taught as partof the marketing curriculum), and capstonecourses such as strategic management. Ofcourse, they might also find a home incolleges of engineering and schools of law.Whether they will be used depends entirelyon the experience of the faculty teachingthe courses. Professors familiar withintellectual property and convinced of thevalue of IP commercialisation will be likelyto use such cases. Others will not.

To obtain academic credibility, does IPmanagement need to developdistinguishing subjects and methods? Ifso, what would these subjects andmethods be?

LN: This is a continuing problem in businessschools. Multi-disciplinary fields, likeentrepreneurship, do not lend themselves toscholarly studies, which tend to go deep intonarrow areas. IP management for business isanother such multi-disciplinary field. It’sdifficult for universities to hire faculty toteach those subjects that fit their criteria fortenure: scholars who publish widely inscholarly subjects. Some universitiescompensate for this by hiring either adjunctfaculty or professors of practice.

I could envision IP strategy, itself, as ascholarly field or a sub-specialty of acorporate strategy professor. But I don’tthink it’s worth waiting until such a fielddevelops - and I’m not sure whether it woulddevelop in a business school or a law school.

MB: I don’t think so, as far as subjects areconcerned. I don’t know what you mean bymethods, but I sponsor building new MBA

business management programmes above;and to the case study and academiccredibility questions below.

MB: It should look like one of MichaelPorter’s books: understandable and simplefor readers; yet rigorous and rich withexamples. My textbook aims to cover mainlyareas in the management of intellectualproperty (producing, protecting, leveraging,trading), focusing on the patent market.

LC: Such a book should include:• Fundamental concepts of IP law.• Concrete examples of why certain types

of intellectual property are morevaluable than others.

• An overview of how intellectualproperty must be incorporated intobusiness strategy on par with R&D andmarketing.

• Concrete examples of successful versusunsuccessful IP business strategy.

• Many different cases about corporateintrapreneurship, “skunkworks”, spin-offs and start-ups.

• Coverage of topics such as: • How to validate.• Where new ideas come from.• How we know what customers really

want and how much they are willingto pay for it.

• A framework for the integration ofmanagement and engineering into thesweet spot of commercialisation.

• Webcasts such as “Talk to the Inventor”,“Meet the CEO” etc —not just atHarvard or Northwestern, but availableonline to all students.

What effect would a steady stream ofhigh-quality, IP-oriented business casewrite-ups have on IP education inbusiness schools? If provided tobusiness schools, would they in fact beused? What are your thoughts on thekinds of courses that IP-orientedbusiness cases would best be used in?

LN: Yes, yes, yes! Case studies are mostimportant in areas where differentdisciplines have to come together.

I could envision IP strategy, itself, as a scholarly field or a sub-specialty of a corporate strategy professor. But I don’t think it’sworth waiting until such a field develops



programmes centred on intellectualproperty.

LC: The key to academic credibility is thepresence of a strong theoretical framework,fuelled by an active body of academicresearch in the subject area. Systematicsuccess in IP commercialisation willincrease student demand for such classesand fuel alumni donations. All of these arecritical for building the field.

What should the IP-savvy community -members of the LES, the people in thetechnology transfer community and thereaders of IAM magazine - be doing toimprove IP education in MBAprogrammes?

LN: Contributing case studies, perhapswriting chapters for a book, serving asadjunct faculty and/or professors ofpractice. Also, making it clear to deans ofbusiness schools and deans of engineeringschools that they would like the studentsthey hire to have a background inintellectual property. They listen to thebusiness community.

MB: Contamination is the formula. Bycontamination, I mean offering food forthought, well-written case studies,seminars, specific lessons and so on. Ofcourse, we also need to find top-notchinstitutions willing to buy into the topicand build specific educational programmes.

LC: The LES might provide real-worldmaterials such as those described above. Itmight also continue to provideprogramming for students, such as the LESStudent Business Plan Competition. Itmight also share best practices, setstandards and ethics in deal making, andshare information coming from both sidesof a negotiation through databasescontaining information on royalties andmarket trends. Finally, the IP-savvycommunity should step forward and teach business-oriented IP seminars or webinars to students of MBA programmes.

Time for actionFor now, IP management is not a separateacademic discipline in most businessschools, with its own subjects and methods,and even the sub-area of IP valuation doesnot give clear evidence of having attainedthe rigour that is typically required. When Ilisten to Chief Justice Rader and read whathe has written on IP valuation, and when Ispeak with my friends who make theirliving doing IP valuation, I must concludethat this area has some distance to go toqualify as an academic specialty.But so what? Just as business strategy, as asub-field, has yet to settle on a fixed set ofmethods and subjects, so IP strategy and allof IP management may continue to escapeall attempts at systemisation. And that maybe a good thing.

It may be good simply because, like themore general area of business strategy, IP

Some number of years hence, howwould we know whether the rightlevel of IP education has beeninjected into business managementeducation? What would failure looklike? What would success look like?

Lita Nelsen: Success would include:• Business schools and engineeringschools routinely including intellectualproperty in their curriculum.

• New graduates who understandintellectual property and have someconcept of IP management.

• MBA graduates from the majorbusiness schools who all have suchbackgrounds and senior executiveswho routinely take intellectualproperty into account in theirbusiness strategies.

Failure would be the current status quo.

Mario Benassi: If intellectual property wereindistinguishable, yet super-present inmanagement education programmes - that’ssuccess. If it were a separate, specific andsecondary branch - that’s failure.

Larry Cox: We will know we havesucceeded when IP law, strategy andtransaction engineering are part of the corecurriculum. Success will also be seen whenwe have a shift from training for eithercorporate jobs or entrepreneurship tocomprehensive programmes, includingcommercialisation of intellectual property,designed to prepare students for allpossible career paths at different stages oftheir lives - including training in thecommercialisation of intellectual property.

Failure will look like our currentenvironment, at best; at worst, we will see asteeper decline in where this country sits interms of the global market.

Hitting the right level



strategy and IP management are multi-disciplinary and open. They thus need to beopen to innovation and rethinking to berelevant and useful. They are synthetic,taking on new ideas and new approaches asthey are found to be useful in real life - bybusiness leaders such as you and me andour generalist colleagues.

And so this is the difficulty. Withoutacademic legitimacy - without a claim tospecial subjects and methods, without aconvincing body of descriptive (if notpredictive) research or the near-termpromise of it - IP strategy and IPmanagement struggle for entrance into theuniversity. But there is no compellingreason for their rejection, as long as we areable to dress them up like we dress upbusiness strategy.

We need to put our subject into action.We need to give it a plot and character and abelievable - a recognisable - businesscontext. We need to put the stories that wehave lived into business case studies. Weneed to translate the real events of our livesinto narratives that bring the importanceand complexity and centrality of IP mattersin business today clearly to the attention ofprofessors and students and businessleaders.

We need stories that are engaging andfull of indeterminism and ambiguity and thereal tangle of business and IP strategyissues. These are stories that need to seizethe essence of the IP and business mattersthat most of us face every day; which is tosay, they need realistically to picture the fogof business competition when intellectualproperty is a major element in thatcompetition - that more gentle war.

We need hundreds of high-qualitybusiness cases featuring intellectualproperty as a major strategy element that wecan sneak into universities all over theworld. This would be a start. How do we getall of these business cases written? I don’tknow. How do we ensure that they are ofhigh quality and worthy of being used in auniversity? I don’t know. What are the stepsby which we get adoption of these business

cases by the universities? I don’t know. Whoshould coordinate all this? I don’t know. I’mopen to your ideas.

Also, we need to go to our favourite, ormaybe the most convenient, business schooland begin applying pressure to adjunctprofessors or real professors oradministrators that we may know toincrementally include more IP content intheir curriculum, perhaps furnishing themwith a website where they can find theabove-mentioned IP-centric business cases.Or maybe, to start, we ask these professorsand administrators regularly to include intheir curriculum the few Harvard BusinessReview cases that feature intellectualproperty. We may enlist the help of our HRdepartments. We may also enlist the help ofour senior corporate leaders, our chieffinancial officers, our heads of corporatedevelopment, for example. Our companieswould benefit; so why wouldn’t these peoplepitch in?

Maybe we need to put a course together.Maybe we collaborate on a syllabus. Maybe wecollaborate on the development of lecturenotes and exercises and project ideas. Maybewe crowd-source a course among ourselvesand each take it to our local or favouritebusiness school and offer to teach it, showingthe dean of the school the long list ofluminaries who have contributed to it and whoare teaching it also.

Maybe we offer to team-teach with one ofthe tenured professors - someone whospecialises in business strategy, for example, orquantitative financial analysis. Maybe we canbring the real world into the mix and thetenured professors can provide the adultsupervision. (Or maybe it’s the other wayaround in some cases; I don’t know.)

Who leads this course development work?I don’t know. Maybe it’s our panellists. Whosets up the crowd-sourcing website? I don’tknow. Who participates? I don’t know. How dowe decide on what is included and excluded? Idon’t know. I’m open to your ideas.

Then maybe we need to convince apublisher that an IP textbook can and shouldbe written. Maybe we put together a group of

Action planThe education of IP generalists may beststart at home. IP specialists in IP-owningenterprises - particularly for-profitcompanies - should consider how to bringtheir knowledge to the strategic questionsfacing their companies. This can be tricky,because it may involve a change in thegeneral knowledge base, a change inthinking about business strategy and achange in the organisation’s processes. Ifthe issue is put to the organisation as a valueissue, it may get the most traction. Oncestrategic value can be demonstrated, theorganisation can be mobilised. Theemphasis then can be placed onorganisational improvement. Along theselines, a variety of approaches andtechniques are open to us, the followingamong them:• Develop a case for change in the area of

corporate IP management through acollection of examples (not forattribution) of sub-optimal IPmanagement, and use them to convincethe chief financial officer and thecorporate finance organisation that thereare significant opportunities if thecompany were to dramatically improveits IP management practices.

• Enlist the finance organisation toconvince the corporate leadership thatpolicies and processes relating to IPmanagement need to be improved.

• Develop an enterprise-wide, multi-disciplinary IP policy and processassessment team to uncover the factsand bring forward recommendations.Include the people responsible for IPtransactions today.

• With broad participation, design andimplement new policies and processes.

A

We need to put our subject into action. We need to give it aplot and character and a believable - a recognisable - businesscontext. We need to put the stories that we have lived intobusiness case studies


xxx

notables - people who have some academicstanding or a prayer of some academicstanding - and have each write a chapter intheir area of expertise. What are those areas ofexpertise? I don’t know. Who are thesenotables? I don’t know. Maybe a few of themare our panellists. Who is the publisher inquestion? I don’t know. Who organises allthis? I really don’t know; but I’m open to yourideas.

Bill Elkington is senior director, intellectualproperty management, Rockwell Collins, Inc,and Licensing Executives Society (USA andCanada) trustee for the IP100 ExecutiveForum and Corporate Communications

Established in 1965, the LicensingExecutives Society (USA and Canada), Inc(LES) is a professional society comprised ofover 4,500 members engaged in thetransfer, use, development and marketing oftechnology and intellectual property. TheLES membership includes a wide range ofprofessionals, including businessexecutives, lawyers, licensing consultants,engineers, academicians, scientists andgovernment officials. Many largecorporations, professional firms, anduniversities comprise its membership. The LES is a member society of theLicensing Executives Society International,Inc, with a worldwide membership of morethan 10,000 members in 32 nationalsocieties, representing over 90 countries.For more information on the LES, seewww.lesusacanada.org.

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Timefor Business Students to Get an IP Education