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While capturing, storing, and legally safeguarding innovation records comprises the foundation for innovation management, the real power comes from secure and meaningful accessibility to innovation records and the application of the system to real problems. Secure access means being able to restrict access to specific documents, or types of documents, to select individuals or select groups, and monitor access for real time notification of unauthorized or suspicious activity.

Meaningful access means being able to search the full text of all innovation records from your desktop anywhere in the world by multiple means, including by keyword, concept, date ranges, author, and division or group.

What are some practical applications that are possible once meaningful access to innovation records is in place?

Trade Secret Management

Trade secrets are both a powerful and overlooked form of intellectual property. If you can prove that you properly protect your innovation as a trade secret, you can significantly mitigate losses that go hand-in-hand with employees walking out the door with sensitive technology secrets. Nevertheless, calling something a trade secret and actually having a trade secret are very different things. Companies and employees throughout the US often misuse the term trade secret, calling any and all technology developed internally a trade secret, even though the company implements no defined processes for protection of those so-called secrets. While this paper is not intended to describe the various laws associated with trade secret protection, one common requirement of a trade secret is that companies take adequate measures to guard the secrecy of the information.

With that in mind, it is essential to have an innovation management system that limits access to specific documents or types of documents. As well, it is important to have a system that automatically monitors search and download activity. By restricting access to trade secrets, a business can prove that they appropriately integrated their trade secret policy with a process or system. By monitoring activity, a business can prove that they properly enforced their trade secret policy and access was actually restricted.

A trade secret management system should also provide a means for automatic alerts when unauthorized or suspicious activity occurs, such as large download volumes, downloads at odd times, downloads from odd IP addresses, and odd searches of the database. Such a facility can actually prevent a theft before it occurs.

This is the fourth in a series of articles on this blog about Best Practices For Successful Innovation Management. For more in this series, see: