In search of “new and improved,” companies spend billions of dollars every year on research and development, product development, product testing, external consultants, market research, customer research, and new manufacturing processes. As a result of this spending, new intellectual property is being created every day. But without an effective intellectual property strategy, important inventions may not be identified.
All people and companies invent more than they recognize. Their inventions range across of a wide spectrum of ideas and are not only technology based or driven. Unfortunately for most companies, a failure to identify all of their inventions means that their intellectual property strategy and commercial business strategy based on these inventions are inherently flawed as they based on incomplete information. As a result, the companies may not be maximizing the return on their investments and, even worse, they may be losing competitive advantages that are already within their grasp.
A good invention identification approach looks at the many problems, challenges and potential solutions a person, team or company may be experiencing and developing from a variety of lenses, such as:
- customer needs, test results and feedback;
- challenges created by competitors, suppliers and even potential or actual partners;
- manufacturing and delivery challenges and risk mitigation;
- market, standards and regulatory changes;
- approach to and use of big data and the internet of things;
- implementation of new metrics and measuring tools;
- commercial and growth opportunities;
- unexpected choke points and forks in the road;
- technology and branding hurdles and bottlenecks;
- open innovation and crowdsourcing initiatives;
- lean, agile, six sigma, TRIZ and design thinking approaches;
- system, device and component lifecycles;
- temporal aspects, need states and usage occasions;
- organic and inorganic growth expectations and plans;
- prior and alternative solutions;
- new terminology resulting from new situations, conditions, and circumstances;
- data and information protection needs and requirements;
- core and non-core investment areas;
- evolutionary/incremental developments and revolutionary/disruptive developments; and
- adjacencies, cross-pollinations and extensions.
A good invention identification approach is not limited to scientific and technical developments and extends well beyond them into commercial, marketing, financial, partnership and competitive areas. The ability to see ideas and identify inventions can vary easily due to differences in culture, personality, team-focus, cross-functional collaboration, leadership participation and support, and time availability, and be negatively impacted further by bureaucracy, deadlines, inattentional or perceptual blindness, rigid internal processes, poor goal alignment, limited information sharing and cross-functional co-ownership, weak or confusing long term vision, intolerance for failure, and many other factors. Thus, invention identification can be as much an art as it is a science and the best way to get better at identifying inventions is to actively do it many times in many areas.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to identifying inventions, but every approach benefits from multiple ways of seeing and thinking. Fortunately, every person and every company can broaden its view as to what might be an invention, improve its approach to identifying its inventions and, as a result, improve its intellectual property strategy and its commercial success. Below are just six of the many ways to think about this. While they overlap, each provides a different way of seeing and thinking that helps identify inventions.
- Why are we doing this? Digging deep to understand the full nature and root causes of the problems and challenges is a critical part of identifying your inventions. Consider the classic “five whys” approach and keep asking why, why, why, why and why. If the problem is that a manufacturing process is not quick enough, ask why. If the answer is that it takes too long for an ingredient to be mixed during the manufacturing approach, ask why. If the answer is that the ingredient’s starting particle size is too large, ask why. And so on and so on and so on…. If the problem is that a product is too expensive, ask why. If the answer is that the product’s design is very complicated, ask why. If the answer is that the complicated design is a result of the physical demands on the product during manufacturing, operation or use, ask why. And so and so on and so on…. Settling for a simple initial question, problem statement and answer stops the exploration into the root causes of the problems being solved and how, thereby limiting full identification of the resulting inventions. And don’t be fooled – just because a solution is obvious once the problem has been understood does not mean that an invention has not been created.
- Where are the gaps? What are the new needs, requirements, asks and preferences of your customers, partners, market, industry, etc.? What new regulatory requirements, supply shortfalls, market changes, and shortcomings in current technology and product offerings are you facing? What features and advances are present in your competitors’ current offerings or expected in their new offerings that you do not currently provide, and how will you and your customers react? How you address and fill these gaps will almost always lead to new inventions.
- What are the risks? How are you planning to work with a supplier that also supplies products and services to your competitors? How are you planning to work with a potential partner so that you don’t educate the partner to an extent where the partner no longer needs you? How are you going to work with a consultant so that you can use the consultant’s deliverables without a long-term reliance on the consultant? As you consider these risks, along with the related opportunities, more problems likely will be identified, along with the inventions that may help mitigate these risks and drive new opportunities.
- What do you know? How are your products and service offerings evolving? What tests have you done, what surveys have you conducted, what feedback have you gotten, and what changes have you considered or implemented as a result? What needs to be unlearned or removed and why? What have you learned from the solutions that didn’t work? How did you deal with unexpected twists and setbacks? As your plans, offerings and solutions evolve, don’t forget that the intermediate learnings, past failures, and the solutions not implemented may be inventive or have inventive aspects even if they are not optimal or implemented. Invention identification involves looking at all inventions arising from the investments you made in your development processes and projects, not just the final implemented versions.
- How did you end up here? Ask questions to understand the reasons behind changes and the resulting implementations. At all levels successful companies look for change, whether to improve margins or cut costs, revitalize or reposition brands, streamline processes, move into new markets, evolve products and services, or drive competitive success. Be sure to understand the rationale driving the new approach and the need for the change. What opportunities have been identified and prioritized, what motivators and metrics are being used to drive the change and measure its success, and what needs are driving the course of the change as well as its underlying narrative at the company and functional levels? What is the company doing to take advantage of these new opportunities and drive the change, and what new ideas have resulted?
- What is next? How can your technology, products, services and core strengths be used in other areas outside your current primary commercial focus? What would it take to modify them to be more applicable in these adjacent areas? While this analysis is not intended to drive a change in your commercial strategy, or to create a loss of focus in the implementation of your commercial strategy, this type of analysis finds further avenues to drive a more robust intellectual property strategy and increase your return on the investments you are already making.
Good luck with the invention hunting!