Seldom can a single software system satisfy the needs of an entire business. Integrating best of breed solutions into existing systems is a requirement of any innovation management system. A good innovation management system processes documents in a wide variety of common formats (such as PDF, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) and accommodates documents or files in any format. Innovation management requires that the system adapt to the environment, not vice versa.

Additionally, an innovation management system should integrate seamlessly with existing infrastructure, such as leading SQL databases (like MySQL, Oracle, or DB2), mail servers (such as Notes, Exchange, or sendmail), and centralized directory management (such as Active Directory or other LDAP system).

Integrated Prior Art Searching

Although thorough prior art searching should be done by search professionals, innovators and managers often require quick access to limited prior art searching. Providing this means providing access to prior art from innovators' desktops, without the need for advanced search skills.

An ideal innovation management system will provide rapid access to both internal and worldwide prior art by using a document as a search query. This would eliminate the need to have any search skills and instantly empower innovators and managers alike to see the technology and IP landscape related to their own innovation.

Integrated Defensive Publishing

The most efficient means of preventing competitors from obtaining patents is defensive publishing. Unlike patents, that require filing in all relevant countries throughout the world, one defensive publication can prevent or defeat patents worldwide. Many of the most innovative companies in the world have integrated defensive publishing capabilities directly into their innovation management systems. This reduces publishing barriers once a decision has been made to place innovation defensively into the public domain.

Since the ideal innovation management system is already capturing innovation records, and making them rapidly available for decision, an integrated defensive publishing capability can be little more than a link.

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

Innovation management can embody workflow rules, such as a document approval chain. Many organizations recognize that good practice requires one or more sign-offs before an innovation document may be utilized or released for any purpose. Decisions should be made to patent, publish, release, or hold secret innovation using a well-defined process. An example process might be a review chain where:

1. An engineer submits a document to …
2. A manager, who then may approve or reject it (possibly after seeking third party opinion) for review by …
3. An innovation committee, who then approves or reject it for handling by …
4. The CPC's office, who then approves or rejects it for publication or holding as …
5. A journal article, conference paper, public presentation, patent application, defensive publication, or internal trade secret …

An innovation management system needs to embody the flexibility to express a variety of workflow rules and actions that are appropriate to the procedures, standards, and culture of individual companies. Such workflow rules can incorporate facilities like email notifications of events, automated reminders, process status and aging reports, and rapidly accessible views to encourage use and compliance.

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

R&D Executives

One of many challenges facing R&D managers is monitoring the day-to-day innovation activity of their employees. This challenge is exacerbated when their employees are spread out across states or countries. These managers typically do not have the advantage enjoyed by sales managers who can virtually walk in the footsteps of their reps simply by reviewing weekly sales activity reports. At a glance, a sales manager can determine number of calls, sales meetings, contracts sent out, contracts closed, and all the important detail associated with each of those activities. Typically, R&D managers cannot.

With innovation reporting, R&D managers can essentially walk in the footsteps of their employees and have significantly more knowledge about their innovation activities.

Chief Patent Counsel (CPC)

An important function of CPC is to provide guidance to the business units as to patenting and other IP matters. Under ideal conditions, CPC or in-house patent counsel will perform invention “scans.” This typically involves face-to-face meetings with engineers to discuss innovation activity. From these meetings, the CPC can proactively assist the business units in IP decision making. The challenge most CPCs face is that they are so busy responding to the needs of many business leaders or business units, they do not have time to be “proactive” and are often reduced to a more reactive role. It’s all about time, and there is only so much of it each day. A CPC must be highly efficient to get far enough ahead of innovation to add strategic value.

Innovation reports are an outstanding tool for CPCs. With these reports, a CPC can actually conduct invention “scans” from their desk. With a few clicks, they can review the innovation activity of each engineer of interest. They can literally click through from the inventor to actual uploaded invention records or from relevant categories of documents to the necessary inventors. Without leaving their desks, they can glean more information about inventors than they could being face-to-face. Innovation reports can bring CPC closer to the inventors and move them from a reactive/tactical role to a proactive/strategic role.

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

In reality, meeting face-to-face or by phone is an inefficient way to collaborate. It is too difficult to connect. An innovation management system should create a collaborative environment in the same way that the Web does … with blogs. Ideally, a good innovation management system should automatically turn innovation records into internal “executive blogs.” It should also allow for concept clustering and user alerts so that relevant ideas can be pushed out to interested colleagues throughout the world. This enables managers to set alerts not only by bibliographic fields such as author and title, but also by concepts. With such capabilities, employees can “collaborate” on their own time. Invention records can be enhanced with comments from employees throughout the company, regardless of where they work or whom they know. Suddenly, many barriers to meaningful communication can be eliminated.

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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:

The downside of capturing and storing invention records electronically, though, is that electronic documents can be altered, easily and undetectably. People can change dates or undetectably add content long after the creation of a document. Fraud can be committed and it could change the outcome of costly litigation. Sometimes the creation date of one or a few documents could mean the difference between a negative verdict in the millions of dollars, and a dismissal. In every case, electronic records will be needed to support both sides of a litigation matter. Opposing counsel know how easily electronic documents can be altered and will use that fact to diminish the credibility of witnesses and documents. Judges and juries also know how easily electronic records can be fraudulently altered and they often embrace conspiratorial theories. The ease with which someone can fraudulently alter electronic documents can seriously undermine the credibility of essential records that an organization may depend upon during trial.

With this in mind, it is of critical importance that an innovation management system legally safeguards all electronic records that might be needed downstream during trial or any other type of adversarial proceeding. The problem is that no one has yet invented a crystal ball that really works. Consequently, it is still impossible for any company to predict which of millions and millions of electronic records will be needed in the future during litigation against any one of any number of litigious competitors, customers, vendors, or complete strangers throughout the world.

Therefore, an innovation management system must legally safeguard all electronic records throughout the organization. It must essentially create a “document insurance” policy. Since we already know that a requirement for behavioral change will collapse an otherwise perfectly good system, the legal safeguarding must occur automatically. Third-party digital notarization by an industry-trusted source of all invention records is critical to effective innovation management. During trial or other adversarial proceedings, there are few things more powerful than testimony by objective, third-party witnesses.

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The biggest obstacle to implementing a new system that secures all innovation records is a requirement for behavioral change on the part of innovators in the uploading process. It is difficult to gain adoption of a system that alters an innovator’s approach to his or her daily routine. In general, people do not like to change the way they do things. If a new system requires them to add or change steps in any meaningful way, that system will probably fail to be adopted and used. A failed innovation management system leads to failed innovation management.

The closer a document upload process fits within the usual work patterns of employees, the greater the chance of gaining adoption throughout an organization. The problem is that employees do things differently from one another. A document upload system that works well with one employee will not necessarily work well with another. This fact of life requires that an effective document capture component include multiple, easy methods for capturing invention records from inventors.

What does that mean? Well, it means that the upload process must allow for several types of manual upload mechanisms, automated upload mechanisms, and batch upload options. In addition, rather than requiring specific formats for documents (which, again, leads to the requirement for behavioral change), the upload and document processing components of the system must allow for the automated or manual upload of virtually any electronic formats.

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

Every day businesses hemorrhage innovative ideas that could lead to useful patents, defensive publications, and trade secrets because the innovative ideas never reach the decision body. Every day even more businesses waste resources duplicating innovative initiatives because of failures in intra-company collaboration and failures in accessible aggregation and storage of innovative ideas. Moreover, every day businesses take needless (and often costly) infringement risks because of absent mechanisms for the legal safeguarding of innovation records and processes for prior art searching. Simply put, without a strong innovation management infrastructure, IP management systems and processes are often little more than a superficial glimpse of what they could and should be.

At the same time, successful innovation management results in better innovation work product, improved allocation of resources, higher product/service margins, increased licensing revenue, stability in litigation, market dominance, and higher client and shareholder value.

So, is it enough to merely develop powerful innovation? No. It’s necessary, but not enough. Without an effective innovation management infrastructure, not only will valuable innovation and opportunities be lost, but the time and resources invested to develop that innovation and position for opportunities will be lost as well.

An effective innovation management system typically requires the following components:

• Easy capture and storage of innovation records
• Automatic third-party legal authentication of innovation records
• Secure accessibility of innovation records
• Web based innovation collaboration
• Automated innovation reports for executives and managers (daily, weekly, monthly,
• quarterly, annually)
• Document workflow for important document types
• Interaction with other document systems
• Integrated and easy-to-use prior art searching
• Integrated and easy-to-use defensive publishing

Simply put, to survive in this evolving intellectual business community, companies must become savvy in all matters of IP. Greater emphasis is being placed on effectively managing the flow of innovation throughout an entire organization. Since invention records are often scattered in various locations (laptops, PCs, paper, etc), they are not easily accessible. Moreover, the records are extremely vulnerable to vanish through a disgruntled employee, theft, or even a simple computer crash. Trade secrets are walking out the front door of corporations every day. As the amount of information increases, so too does the urgency for more efficient processes. Companies can have an abundance of data, but without effective management tools, they are unable to convert that data into useful information - reports.

As documents are automatically collected and archived into a central database, they must be legally safeguarded. This authenticates the date, time, and content of each document for future use at trial or other adversarial proceedings. Since it is impossible to know which documents may potentially be needed as evidence in IP litigation, all records should be safeguarded.

Furthermore, having a secure, web-based innovation system allows remote access for those who need it – anytime. Imagine the possibilities of searching and collaborating on all innovative documents, extracting detailed reports, and even defensively publishing documents with the click of a button.

Building a robust IP portfolio requires insight and collaboration. Often times committees and personnel from remote locations are involved in the decision making process. If not structured properly, this could considerably lengthen the innovation cycle – costing valuable time and money. In an industry where dates are everything, any slight delay in the development process can have devastating affects. An effective IMS creates a thriving innovative environment which will help a company to protect their freedom to practice.

Intellectual property management is of critical importance to all businesses hoping to compete efficiently in the global economy. The most stunning IP failures occur before an idea even enters the intellectual property management arena. Every day, businesses hemorrhage innovative ideas that could lead to useful patents, defensive publications, trademarks copyrights simply because the innovative ideas never reach the decision body. In many cases, valuable trade secrets are inadvertently revealed destroying their value as intellectual property.

InnovationQ 3.0 introduces a process workflow engine which, when combined with the secure document repository and client agent, provides a comprehensive intellectual property management solution. By automating human processes and providing a secure, easy-to-use environment, InnovationQ enables organizations to become more efficient in protecting their intellectual property. This, in turn, enables them to make better decisions regarding their innovation.

"IP.com is the global leader in enabling companies to effectively manage their intellectual property," says Steven Lai, Managing Director of the Asia Pacific Intellectual Property Association in Taiwan, Republic of China. "IP.com's InnovationQ 3.0 continues their commitment to legally safeguard intellectual property, improve decision-making, and allow companies to get the most value form their portfolios."

“InnovationQ 3.0 takes intellectual property asset management to a new level,” says Tom Petrocelli, IP.com’s Senior Vice President, Enterprise Software. “Without a strong innovation management infrastructure, intellectual property management and processes are often little more than a shadow of what they could and should be.  InnovationQ provides the tools that help facilitate better innovation work product, improved allocation of resources, and higher product and service margins. InnovationQ leads to increased licensing revenue and market dominance, stability in litigation, and higher shareholder and client value.”

In addition to the Software as a Service (SaaS) offering, InnovationQ is also available as an onsite, enterprise solution.  IP.com is committed to working with customers to develop a successful innovation management program.