The first in the series will be on 23 September 2009 at 12 noon UK time (BST) or 13:00 CEST. The debut session will dive right in and tackle Best Practise in IP Diligence for Investors and address:

• what is IP and what are intangibles
• why should we care about IP (varying importance for different types of companies)

The session will then dive even deeper into:

• The real world vs the legal and theoretical approaches to diligence
• IP assets diligence (what questions to ask)
• IP risks diligence (working back from full freedom to operate)
• IP ownership (areas to specifically watch)
• Optional diligence areas (Strategy and Governance)

For more, including how to register, see the Best Practise in IP Diligence for Investors on the European Venture Capital Association website. You can always keep up with ipVA’s activities here and over at our news feed on ipvalueadded.com.

Intellectual Property Strategy: Domestic and Global Perspectives

What a cool course title!  At law school (and in my undergraduate) I always got excited reading through the course catalog — something about all the possibilities for learning new things, almost seemingly without limit.  This time, I didn’t see a full course description, but here’s what I would cover or expect to see in a course with this kind of scope:

• The civil law / common law divide on copyright (copyright v author’s rights)
• Human rights perspectives and IP
• An overview of the various international IP institutions (WIPO, UNESCO, WTO, etc)
• The various international IP systems we do have (PCT, Madrid, etc)
• Regional IP systems (Benelux, EU, EPC, OAPI, etc)
• Free Trade Agreements and WTO rules
• Digital technology and the internet (particularly around jurisdictional issues and data havens)
• International private law & IP issues

This is probably just for starters, as having been on both sides of the aisle in a university setting on international IP issues, I can see endless possibilities.  One particular angle for teaching the strategy side would be case studies, among which I like to use anime fansubs together with the RIAA, BSA, FAST, and Creative Commons as examples in the copyright space.  I can see lots of room for covering NPEs/trolls and why they are prevalent in certain jurisdictions (US) and not so in others (EU) as well.

They also have a number courses in this concentration that would be particularly good for preparing for an in-house IP counsel role, including Taxation of Intellectual Property.

This course and approach adds a further dimension to the ongoing discussion we’re having, partially captured in our article for Managing IP, about how to best approach the IP/Business role within an organisation (the CIPO). One point we’ve been discussing — the risk aversion (or just issue-spotting) approach that gets baked into the lawyer training process. Does it make it more difficult for lawyers to become IP/business leaders? I don’t know the answer, but I do think that courses and concentrations such as this one at Northwestern help to move the ball.

Any thoughts?  What would you teach law students about international IP strategy?

My ears pricked up at this comment, as this is a theme that we’ve discussed on this blog, and we’ll be doing some more research on the state of play of IP/Intellectual Capital courses in MBA programmes.

Ron Laurie however went a step further and suggested a triple partnership between law schools, business schools  and engineering schools to create graduate programmes to produce “Intellectual Asset Mangement Executives”. This is a cool idea.

However, I wonder a bit about the inclusion of the engineering schools into this partnership:

• Law schools bring in the legal background on IP and how the law protects intangibles
• Business schools bring in the MBA level materials and practical business education
• Engineering schools, presumably in this partnership, bring in technical know how as well as their perspective on managing the technical side of things.

So the first question: Which engineering school? There’s ME or EE as well as computer, civil, aerospace, and so on. If the programme focus has this school teaching a specific technical area, then what would they teach?

The second question relates to the first: Why engineering?  The answer to this, I suspect, has to do with patents.

Patents play a large role in most technology based businesses when discussing intellectual asset management. Engineering schools could probably bring a lot to the table in the area of patents.  I’d hesitate though in making these sorts of programmes focus too much on one specific technical area – the principles of IAM apply broadly enough that we don’t need to create specialists in aerospace IAM at the graduate level.

But what about Intellectual Asset Mangement Executives who concentrate on areas beyond patent-heavy technology industries? Those that help service-based businesses, software companies, consumer internet, or in media?

If I can dream for a minute alongside Mr. Laurie, I could see a grad programme with a core foundation of intellectual asset management taught by the law and business schools in the first year, and with several electives based on specific industries, including engineering, in the second.

But for now, in the here and today, I think that the first step along this path is Sharon’s point about integrating IP and intellectual asset management into the core curriculum of MBA schools. And I think that this is a dream likely to come true, and is just around the corner.

If journalists do not get IP and report it badly – or not in the way IP professionals would like (sometimes the two are not the same) – I would argue that it is because those inside IP do not make it accessible enough. If IP professionals are not able to make IP relevant to senior management or to journalists or to anyone else, it is no good blaming anyone but themselves. That may sound harsh, but there you go. To get journalists to take IP seriously, you need to explain it to them in a way that they will understand, find interesting and relevant to their readerships. If you don’t do this, they will just not listen – why should they?

Firstly I’ll state that I agree with all of the above. IP is a potential/emerging asset class but the IP world that believes this so passionately seems to find it hard to communicate this to the business world that does not.

Why is this? I don’t find it too hard to understand (when I can listen, definitely with a few raised eyebrows) to Stephen Hawking telling me about quantum physics and the dawn of time. So where are we going wrong?

To widen out the debate, with some thoughts on how to make IP more understandable:

1. The need for a common language. IP in its narrowest sense (ie the various classes of specific legal rights such as patents) is how the business world sees IP – a set of legal rights and rightfully the domain of lawyers. But when one listens to the excellent Mary Adams of i-Capital Advisors or to Kelvin King of Valuation Consulting, you get to a whole new language and perspective. Its about “intangibles” or “intellectual capital” not just the much narrower IP. It’s about humans and what they create.  It’s about the relationships that a business creates and sustains. I think the IP community needs to embrace this wider perspective. And to create a new and common standard language that applies to it.

For me I’d follow the accountants. “Intangibles” is pretty well defined in that market already.

2. The need for perspective. I do think that the IP community over-emphasises IP’s importance and thereby damages its own credibility. It is important but too often we hear the over-emotional exaggeration of its importance to every business, or the apparent importance as greater than other business fundamentals. It is not.

3. The need to educate. Duncan Bucknell and I agree on this. In the widest possible context those that don’t get it need to experience it so that they can. At a basic level. Remember that IP or intangibles are not taught at many business schools beyond the very basics. We need to pitch ourselves into education.

4. The need to de-emphasise the litigation effect. I think that the earliest evolution of our market over-emphasises the link between IP value and litigation. We are moving away from this, but with most of the prominent IP success stories being linked to litigation, the move cannot come fast enough.

5. The ability to clearly communicate. I agree with Joff’s point that many journalists have literally minutes to grasp a whole topic, and that getting a clear IP understanding in that time is hard. We’ve tried it in the last 6 months with a PR program at ipVA. Its hard but after 6 months you do learn what works and what does not. Jordan and I also had a great call with a major accounting firm a couple of weeks ago about the emerging areas of corporate reporting of intangibles. If we can find ways of drawing out comparables between good “IP” companies and bad, we would begin to bridge the communication gap. But it is not just in talking to journalists that we need this – it is about also talking to markets. CEO’s, banks, funders, chairmen, and so on in a non-legal, stimulating and relevant way.

I’m sure that there are other issues missing from the list but these are some of our thoughts at ipVA. Valuation is another key element for sure but I’m not a valuation specialist. All we do know from those who are, is that it is less nebulous than it was, and becoming more accepted.

Pick your own date by which these factors will merge and evolve sufficiently to be a part of business mainstream.

This could be in the context of teaching MBAs about IP, a CLE/CPD to lawyers, or training a business’s board and management about IP. Of course a large part of the answer depends on how you define IP strategy, as when you start talking about intellectual capital it can cover virtually everything about a business, including how you motivate and manage human capital.

As a research brief, I phrased it in the context of teaching, as I think that this brings focus to the core of the ideas and techniques that form the structure that can later be built on with more specifc and multi-layered activity. I do want to focus though on a wide range of materials around IP, or more broadly the “intangibles”, for both practising IP strategists  and for those who just need to know the basics in order to understand this element to their business.

The IP strategy reading list would likely break down into:

• The basics of Intellectual Property rights (for those that need to know more about IP).
• Sources outlining the importance of intellectual capital and its relevance to business.
• Books / articles outlining specific strategies (such as building an IP thicket)  — taking care to focus on all areas of IP and not just patents.
• Reference material for the IP strategist.

Any suggestions for the list?

I’ll be adding pages and developing content for each of these four areas over the coming months, so please send in your suggestions.

• Does IP make it into the list of required (core) courses at top MBA schools?
• Are IP fundamentals or IP strategy courses offered as electives at these schools?

To answer these, I looked at the course offerings available on the web of a selection of top business schools – and the results were a little unexpected.

MBA survey criteria and details

A number of MBA rankings exist, and I’m sure that, much like law school rankings, we could waste lots of pixels discussing which ones to use. From the selection I reviewed, the rankings varied significantly, though a few were consistently in the top. I chose to combine the top ten from the FT and the Economist rankings. This combined list consisted of 15 business schools around the world.

I limited the review of each of these schools to the full time MBA – Executive MBAs were out of the scope.

During the search, I was looking for IP as a separate course or a course that had IP as the main focus.  Now I understand that there could be some debate here, as clearly lots of classes that IP impacts could (and probably do) have IP as a component of the required coursework. However I limited it in this way for practical reasons – some MBA programmes have over 100 course offerings (too much material to parse) – and for fairness – some schools don’t include much more than a course title and a one sentence description on the web, while others have full syllabi detailing practically every class.

I also avoided (when distinguishable) courses in other departments that students could seek out and take (but not merely cross-listed courses). They don’t form an official b-school elective and require the student (where the school allows) to scour the course catalog for the entire university and (often) argue that they should be allowed access.

Brand management courses were not included as IP courses. Courses on “innovation” in general not included either. After review some of the syllabi for these, they seemed out of the scope as IP seemed of little or no focus to these courses (though it certainly should be included from my perspective).

Results: IP not visible in MBA offerings

Here are the results, with links to the specific pages or PDF file on each site listing the courses offered:

Notes on survey:

[1] For Chicago Booth (formerly GSB), I didn’t see a full list of electives and based the elective search on the “sample courses” provided for each of the MBA concentrations offered. If you see a full list, please send it along for review.

[2] Wharton requires that on top of core/required courses, students must fulfil the core of a major, which were reviewed as part of the electives offered. It appeared that the same courses could be both an elective and for a major, depending on which major the student selected. The supplemental link in the elective column is for the full course listing.

Discussion: IP as an MBA required course

No MBA programme required IP as a separate core or required course, though Wharton does get kudos however for explicitly mentioning IP as a component of its core The Governmental and Legal Environment of Business class.

Why examine the core?  Lots of schools require courses on basics such as finance, economics, marketing, communication, and at some schools, business law. I’d argue that IP is just as important as any of these areas in terms of fundamentals.

But as to the results, I’m not surprised here. I’ll admit that I don’t know if an entirely separate, full-length required course on IP in an MBA programme is the right approach. I would argue that IP has such a broad and growing impact that it at least deserves a place somewhere in the required courses. But to be fair, it didn’t appear that most required a separate business law course either (so hard to justify a course on just one area within the law).

Perhaps the best approach does come from Wharton, explicitly including IP as a component within the core courses. Better still, a requirement that IP be discussed in each relevant core course.

Discussion: IP as an MBA elective

Only three offered specific IP electives: Harvard, Stanford, and MIT: Sloan. Each only offered one course specifically focussed on IP:

• Harvard | Field Study Seminar: Intellectual Property for Executives
• MIT: Sloan | Patents, Copyrights, and the Law of Intellectual Property
• Stanford | Intellectual Property & Its Effect on Business

With electives, I did think that IP would find its way into more courses with an explicit IP focus. Of course this doesn’t cover the number of courses that have IP as a component due to, as mentioned above, the practical difficulties of locating and reviewing the full descriptions of (all told) well over a thousand electives from across 15 universities. Overall however, these results are disappointing and a bit surprising.

It’s interesting to note that all three of with IP electives are large universities located in major tech areas (Stanford – Silcon Valley and MIT and HBS in Boston/Cambridge). And they are all in the United States.

Selecting from the course descriptions I did have a chance to review that mentioned IP include courses such as:

• NYU: Stern’s Search and the new economy.
• London Business School’s New Technology Ventures and New Creative Ventures.
• MIT Sloan’s J Innovation Teams practical course even specifically addresses developing an IP strategy.

Plenty of other courses, such as ones about building a Silicon Valley start up, would, you would hope, discuss IP and its role within the process as a component.

I did however note a few that gave course descriptions and didn’t mention IP that looked a bit surprising:

• At NYU: Stern Entertainment and Media: Markets and Economics specifically mentions IP while Entertainment Law does not.
• London Business School has an elective through the University of London on Valuation, but doesn’t appear to include IP or intangibles as part of the course.

Final thoughts

• Many of these same universities have internationally known academics researching IP in their business schools, and often fantastic IP programmes in law. So it’s not necessarily a resource or awareness problem within the universities themselves.
• There are certainly other useful (and more direct) ways of surveying this information if time and resources permitted – such direct surveys and faculty publication data, so please comment. This is at best an imperfect measure of how much IP has permeated MBA education.
• And of course, YMMV.

Please share your thoughts below or email me direct.

Like any marriage, this is a partnership built on understanding.  In this case, successfully integrating IP into a business and the business into the IP in the long term means that:

• The IP/legal team understands the wider business context and strategy; and
• Management and the business strategy team understands the basics of IP.

[NB: I see IP strategy consultants such as ourselves as facilitators that build understanding between these two groups - we are IP business marriage counselors].

MBAs make up a key moment in the education of one half of this partnership – the management and business strategy team. It seems both logical and a practical (pedagogical) necessity to integrate IP into this educational process in order to fully equip management with the IP fundamentals for modern business.

So this leads to a question:

Do MBA programmes integrate intellectual property into their curriculum, and if so, how?

First, I did some searching to see if any specialised IP-centred MBA exists, but only found Andy Gibbs’s article at IP Frontline “Intellectual Property is a CEO Thing“, which gives an excellent discussion of MBA programmes and IP training:

Try as they may, MBA and Executive MBA programs offered by respected institutions like Harvard, Yale, Stanford and others, ill-prepare tomorrow’s CEO for today’s business climate. Even ‘entrepreneuring’ curricula introduce students of business to little more than statistical market analysis and forensic review of notorious or notable businesses of yesteryear — in essence, barely more than an applied business history class.

He notes that intellectual property forms the core of “today’s business climate” that backward-facing approach MBA graduates are ill prepared to handle:

Pay attention only to the MBA laundry list, and in 24 months, a host of IP-savvy CEOs will clean your clock! … [I]intellectual property management is the ultimate big gun. The competent CEO knows that for almost every business casualty, there is a recovery plan. But, lack of prior planning on the IP front line allows the enemy to gain a competitive, long-term advantage from which there is NO recovery.

Truer words…

Gibbs’s article is from 2001 – so what’s been happening in eight years in MBA programmes? Has IP taken centre stage in MBA teaching? Does it even have a walk on role? I’m encouraged that someone like Neil Wilkof teaches MBA courses on IP, but given some of his thoughts in his IAM letter, and the fact that academia moves rather slowly, I’m wondering specifically.

• Does IP make it into the list of required (core) courses at top MBA schools?
• Are IP fundamentals or IP strategy courses offered as electives?

In trying to find the answer, the next post in this series will be a short (and unscientific) survey of the IP offerings in MBA programmes. Since this topic will become a recurring theme on this blog, I’m creating a new category for posts on “IP Education”.