Last week a colleague popped in to my office and asked, “Jim, can you tell me about prior art?” It turned out what he wanted to understand is how organizations should be thinking about prior art and its relation to their innovation efforts. This is an interesting question because prior art is central to innovation, and yet many organizations don’t understand where and the extent to which prior art can be leveraged to enhance their innovation programs.
Let’s begin by clarifying what we mean by prior art. In the context of innovation, the legal definition as it relates to patent law is too restrictive. In the realm of innovation, we should be considering prior art to be any pre-existing information on the state of the art. This extends the notion of prior art to include, for example, trade secret information which might not normally be considered in the stricter patent definition.
Where is such prior art useful to innovation practitioners? It is highly valuable throughout the innovation process.
During the strategic planning phase, prior art is useful for a number of reasons. Tasks such as: technology landscape analysis, S-curve analysis, technology evolution and scenario planning, white space and partner identification, and build vs. buy analysis all are highly reliant on analysis of prior art information. In these planning activities, the ability to have an accurate view of the prior art landscape can allow an organization to make informed decisions.
Ideation is also great benefited from prior art. When we consider the way in which most problems are solved, the vast majority are solved by applying known solutions. Even highly inventive solutions typically leverage existing knowledge. The ability to quickly and optimally solve problems is directly related to the ability to easily identify concepts relevant to the problem being examined. The more you are able to leverage internal information assets in this context, the more efficient your organization becomes. The more you are able to leverage external and cross domain information, the more inventive your organization becomes.
Selecting the right path forward when multiple concepts have been identified is a challenge for many companies. Prior art is helpful here as well. The global knowledge base represented by prior art can be used to validate conceptual strategies before entering costly prototype and test cycles.
Finally, once a high value solution path is selected, the questions of intellectual property protection loom large. Do you have freedom to operate? If you run into an IP barrier, is there a circumvention strategy that can be pursued? Is the innovation protectable, and if so, what is the best strategy? All of these questions are answered with the help of prior art.
There is no doubt that prior art is highly important to any innovation practitioner. Innovation is to a great extent all about the reuse of prior art. The more knowledge and experience you have in your tool box to approach an innovation challenge, the more likely you are to be successful in finding the best solution. Being able to tap into prior art effectively expands your box.
For innovation practitioners the message is clear. You need to be able leverage all types of knowledge effectively—when you need it; where you need it; in the context in which you need it. Does your innovation infrastructure allow you to do this? If not, this is an area you should be looking at without delay.
Comments