Innovating To Win

More Than Meets the Eye

On his blog, Thirty Minutes from Andromeda, my friend Jim Belfiore writes about Michael Jackson.  But Jim’s post points out a side of Michael that goes beyond the iconic King of Pop image.  Did you know Michael Jackson was also an inventor?  Check it out on Jim’s blog.

Of course, there are many celebrity inventors.  We come to see people through the lens of persona and tend to forget that people are often more complex than what we see from the outside.  Here are some of my favorite examples of people we all know who have also made their mark as inventors.

Gary Burghoff: US Pat No. 5,235,774
Still waters run deep.  Many of us remember Gary as the quiet, wide-eyed “Radar” O’Reilly of MASH.  However, Gary also created a chum dispensing device to attract fish.

Jamie Lee Curtis: US Pat No. 4,753,647
Who knew the daughter of Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh was so clever.  Here she describes an improve diaper with a sealable pouch for clean-up wipes.

Samuel Clemens: US Pat No. 121,992
The iconic American writer and humorist known as Mark Twain patented three inventions.  This patent describes an improved adjustable clothing strap.

Zeppo Marx: US Pat No. 3,473,526
The youngest and perhaps underappreciated of the Marx brothers, Zeppo appeared in the first five of the Marx brothers’ films before he went his own way as an agent.  However with the patent, we can see Zeppo’s range was quite broad.  This patent describes a device for monitoring cardiac pulse rate.

Paul Winchell: US Pat No. 3,097,366
As a child watching Paul Winchell on television, I had no idea that besides being a great ventriloquist he was also a prolific inventor.  He has loads of patents to his credit covering a broad array of subject areas.  This one is for an artificial heart.

Abraham Lincoln: US Pat No. 6,469
Abe has always been among my favorite US presidents, but he is also my favorite celebrity inventor.  In this invention, Lincoln describes a system to add buoyancy to river barges.

TRIZ Enabled Mergers and Acquisitions

For those of us who did not make it to TRIZCON2008, a neat paper by Jim Belfiore has been published on the TRIZ Journal site.  This paper is a good read and presents a novel take on applying some TRIZ concepts to the task of analyzing companies for possible M&A interest.  Take a look and share your thoughts on this interesting piece.

Time To Rethink The Bayh-Dole Act

Today, Bill Gates is scheduled to testify before the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology on the future of innovation and U.S. competitiveness.  At a hearing commemorating the committee’s 50th anniversary, Gates will focus on key issues around the future of U.S. competitiveness: including education and work-force development, the need for immigration reform to allow highly skilled workers to remain in the U.S, and the need to continue to invest in basic research.

“I know we all want the United States to continue to be the world’s center for innovation. But our position as the global leader in innovation is at risk,” Gates said. “If this nation is to continue to be the global center of innovation, Congress, the current administration and the next president must act decisively.”

Well, here’s a thought.  How about we amend the Bayh-Dole Act?

For those who are not familiar with the Bayh-Dole Act, it is a very significant piece of U.S. intellectual property legislation that was enacted in 1980.  Perhaps the most significant aspect of the legislation was the change in the assumption of ownership of the intellectual property created by government funded research.  Prior to Bayh-Dole, the resulting IP from government funded research was the property of the taxpayers—the people who actual paid for the research.

It was argued at the time, that the ownership of IP by the taxpayers did not benefit society because universities had no incentive to move the IP into the commercial arena.   By creating a monetization opportunity for the research institutions, the taxpayers would benefit because the inventions would more rapidly make their way to useful products, and innovation would be further spurred by the institutions seeking enhanced IP driven revenue. 

In practice, Bayh-Dole has been mostly a benefit to the business community.  Not that this is a bad thing, but it was certainly not the stated intent of the bill.

It seems that a modified Bayh-Dole could continue to serve the original intent, and at the same time help ensure that the benefits of publicly funded research inure more directly to the taxpayers.  Rather than transfer ownership of the IP wholly to the research institution, the ownership should be held by taxpayers under a profit sharing program that cuts research institutions and inventor in on a piece of the monetization action.

An Office of Innovation Development should be formed that is responsible for working with institutions to actively promote such IP.  The portion of the proceeds from IP development that inure to the taxpayers should then be put in a specific innovation development fund that is earmarked to fund science & technology education, basic research, and innovation skills development.

I am usually the last person to argue for governmental expansion, but privatization of such valuable publicly held assets was a very raw deal for taxpayers.  We are at a pivotal moment in history relative to world economic development.  The resources generated from these intellectual property assets could be channeled to great public benefit.  This would be a real benefit to the U.S. and a significant benefit to the global community as well.

Using Innovation Methodology For Merger & Acquisition Planning

I had the opportunity to review a paper written by a colleague, Jim Belfiore, that will be presented at TRIZCON2008.  I won’t steal Jim’s thunder here, but if you are planning on going to TRIZCON, I highly recommend the session that Jim will be presenting.

Jim is taking on a topic not usual seen at this event—using TRIZ principles to guide business strategy.  The paper presents an approach to looking at how technologies evolve to target M&A opportunity spaces.  Predictive analysis of the opportunities yields a targeted IP analysis plan to uncover interesting investment opportunities.

Sound interesting?  I found the paper a novel treatment of  the subject and a clever application of TRIZ thinking.  Knowing Jim as I do, I think this is a presentation not to be missed.  I wish I could be there.

Patents – Innovation Killer or Innovation Accelerator

It seems every time I scan the recent blog postings on innovation, I see at least one or two posts declaring patents are stifling innovation.  This certainly wasn’t the intent of the patent system.  To the contrary, the idea was that by providing the temporary monopoly granted by a patent, the cause of innovation would be advanced by publishing the latest state of the art so that other innovator could learn.

In a brightly lit room somewhere, the question is asked, “So, how does this patent busting method work?”

“It is really quite simple,” comes the reply.  “The Doctrine of Equivalents and its application in case law give us very good guidance as to how you can break through a competitive IP barrier.  In short, if you follow a simple 3 step process you will rarely fail to find a new non-infringing way to accomplish the goal.

“One, Identify each of the independent claims of the patent in question.

“Two, Model each claim so that its design intent is unambiguously represented.

“Three, Refactor each modeled claim consistent with the principles of the Doctrine of Equivalents.

“Your newly refactored set of models now represent potentially distinct, non-infringing IP.  Of course, there are a few subtleties to this method, and you should always run your new invention by your patent group to be doubly sure, but that is essentially the way it works.”

Although this conversation might sound like a work of fiction, it isn’t.  I can’t even count the number of time I have had this conversation over the years, nor can I count the number of time I have discussed the results people have had applying this and other similar methods.

Yes, it seems clear to me that patents are a springboard for innovation.  If you have the right tools and understand the associated best practices, patents represent a rich source of ideas to spur innovation.

Are You Innovating Wearing a Blindfold?

Do you ever feel like your design teams are groping around for ideas?  If so, you are not alone.  Many organizations don’t feel confident about their ideation capabilities.  What I find interesting is how often corporate policies create barriers to innovation worker effectiveness.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised.  On Seth’s Blog, we see a post about how similar thinking permeates our culture.  Some schools ban students’ use of Wikipedia.  While the educators may be concerned that students might simply regurgitate what they read on the web, Seth points out that Wikipedia simply represents a source of information that has become an integral part of our information infused environment.  To discourage students from mastering the modern skills of navigating the vast reservoirs of accessible knowledge seems misguided.

The same is clearly true in many corporate environments.  As the transparency of information delivery continues to increase, the importance of leveraging both information technology and relevant content looms large.  Yet, in many organizations employees are discouraged and sometimes barred from tapping into these sources of information.

For example, consider your company’s policy on patent literature.  At many manufacturing organizations, innovation workers are prohibited from looking at patent documents for fear that such access might leave the company open to possible liability.  In these organizations, access to patents is left in the hands of the legal team, while engineers are kept in the dark as to the current state of competitive IP.

Like the ban on Wikipedia, such policies are misguided.  In a recent discussion with the EVP of Research and Development for a Fortune 500 consumer product company, he stated that the legal team usually does not have the background and insight to properly assess the strategic relevance of patent information.  Putting this information in the hands of the innovation workers is critical.

Other organizations are silent on the subject, but tacitly impede there designer by not providing them with the right tools to leverage the information buried in the patent archives.  Workers are left to poke around using antiquated and insufficient methods of conducting patent research.

Like the schools that Seth writes about, these companies need to accept that the global climate of competition and information transference has changed.  As information has made it possible for new groups to become active in the global economy, established enterprises much learn how to leverage global knowledge to maintain their competitive edge.

Technology is not the answer to every problem.  But in the new global information economy, not only is technology an answer to the problem of how to harness and effectively mobilize the vast seas of knowledge around us; technology is the only answer.

Prior Art in Innovation

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.

KSR v. Teleflex – Good or Bad for Innovation?

There have been several interesting and thoughtful posts in the blogosphere recently in the wake of the Supreme Court KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc. et al. decision of April 30.  This is a very interesting ruling with many potential implications that have yet to play out.  The assessment of whether this decision is good or bad for innovation is a very subjective one which rests on your personal objectives and whether you feel constrained or protected by the current intellectual property status quo.

Personally, I am still sorting out the reasonably foreseeable impact this ruling will have on innovation.  Here are some initial thoughts on the topic.  I’d love to hear what you think.

It is quite clear that this case and the decision in particular highlight the business value of innovation and patents.  The opinion speaks to the very nature of innovation and classifies levels of novelty by defining a concept of ordinary innovation.  This classification has been underlying the discussion of how patents help or hinder progress.

The patent system was designed to help foster innovation.  It accomplishes this goal in two ways.  By granting a restricted monopoly to the patent holder, the patent system helps mitigate some of the risk of invention by giving the inventor a window of protected opportunity in which to reap the benefit of their investments in the development of the protected invention.  The patent process also accelerates innovation by exposing, through the publication process, new knowledge to the public which would be presumably otherwise withheld.  Through this exposure, the sharing of this knowledge “defines a new threshold from which innovation starts once more”, as the Court has so elegantly stated.

Of course, the temporary monopolies granted by patents are seen by many as creating the undesirable effect of curtailing innovation.  This is particularly the case for patents which are very broad in scope and for patents that are deemed by interested parties as being obvious in nature.

The resolution of conflicts generated by the temporary monopolies and new inventions is the domain of patent litigation.  But along with being very costly, the system of resolution is far from perfect—so much so as to be fundamentally flawed.  This is to a great degree because the judges presiding over such cases usually do not have the qualifications to assess the technical merits of the arguments presented.  This puts these arbiters in a very uncomfortable position.

In practice as a case moves through the system, each side will trot out its expert witnesses to present the conclusive evidence that their respective side of the argument is valid.  How is the judge to make a decision?  In most cases, the judge doesn’t.  Judges typically exert substantial pressure on litigants to reach a settlement.  This creates a condition that highly favors the holder of a patent.

What is interesting about the KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc. et al. decision is that it potentially shifts the balance in the equation.  Companies accused of  infringement now have a stronger tool with which to defend against the action by directly attacking the validity of the patent on the grounds that it did not properly meet the non-obviousness requirement of patentability.  This is the element that makes this decision both very important and potentially alarming.

In the opinion, the Court refines the guidance for what constitutes obviousness.  The conventional interpretation of the obviousness has long hinged upon the notion that if the invention would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art attempting to solve the problem then the invention does not meet the non-obviousness requirement.  This meant that in order to invalidate a patent, it would need to be shown that there existed a teaching or motivation that would have made the invention obvious.  The Court has now made clear that the application of this yardstick has been too narrow.  In particular, the decision states the elements outside of the prior art must be considered in the determination of the existence of motivation—including market forces.

While this does acknowledge a reality of the inventive environment where it is certainly true that sometimes the market points toward a particular evolution of a technology, this creates a potentially dangerous situation in so far as the obviousness of an evolution in the context of market demand is not easily objectively measured.  We can all see that the current market conditions suggest the obvious inevitability of a new class of automobile that uses no petro-fuels but sacrifices none of the perceived benefits of conventional technologies.  However, this does not mean that the instantiation of a technology that satisfies this market need is neither trivial nor obvious.

Similarly, the Court has expanded the notion of relevant prior art.  The decision rejects the notion that prior art relevance is established based on the prior art being directly targeted at the problem that the current invention is intended to solve.  From a practical perspective this means that the level of inventiveness require to clear the non-obviousness hurdle has been raised.  Clever and novel application of out-of-domain knowledge, which has often been the hallmark of truly novel solutions, may now be argued as being within the reasonable grasp of the practitioner of ordinary skill.

The water is further muddied by the Court’s statement that the results of ordinary innovation are not the subject of exclusive rights under the patent laws.  This is being interpreted by some as a distinction between incremental and radical innovation.  The problem here is again that this distinction is highly subjective.  All innovations build upon the past and are therefore incremental to some degree.  So we have a need to define the level of innovative achievement that goes beyond the notion of ordinary innovation and the clear method to recognize that achievement.

From the facts of the case as they are presented in the decision, it does appear that the Court arrived at the correct outcome for the case at hand.  However, the Justices have at the same time created some instability in the system as the scope of the decision will only be clear after the body of case law develops to establish the standard of interpretation.

Patents for Business

While on vacation last week, my reading list included a new book titled Patents for Business by M. Henry Heines.  Mr. Heines, a patent attorney with over thirty years of experience, does a very good job of making accessible and engaging what can be a very dry and soporific subject.

This book is aimed at managers who need to have basic awareness in the arena of intellectual property to make assessments and decisions related to due diligence and other day to day issues that arise.  The book succeeds very well and provides a broad survey of the key topics that these managers need including: patentability, prior art search, novelty and non-obviousness, claims analysis, and freedom to operate.  Mr. Heines gives many specific examples to help the reader absorb the fine points of the topics discussed.

While aimed at managers, Patents for Business is also a useful primer for the innovation practitioner.  Patents are very important for innovators as they both define the landscape in which we can operate and serve as a valuable source of ideas for problem solving.  The chapters on novelty and non-obviousness, freedom to operate, and claims analysis are particularly useful to the innovation practitioner.  While Mr. Heines stops short of discussing systematic approaches for creating freedom to operate in the face of an intellectual property roadblock, many of the basic principles are touched upon.

Patent Activity & Innovation

Some days you are slogging through something as exciting as watching paint dry, when something pops up to make you smile.  So it was for me today.  I had spent most of the day working on a number of patent applications in different phases of the process when I noticed an interesting post on what has become one of my favorite innovation blogs, Endless Innovation.

In “The Semiconductor Industry Patent Scorecard”, Dominic Basulto comments on some data from The Patent Board, reported in the Wall Street Journal.  Dominic concludes by questioning whether a company’s innovation record is a predictor of its financial performance.  This is a good question.  While the topic is too large to address in a simple blog post, I would like to offer a few relevant observations.

We must always bear in mind that there are many factors influencing a company’s financial performance.  Innovation is only one aspect of this complex equation.  Having said that, I contend, other factors being equal, a company with a strong and established innovation core competence will, over time, outperform the company reliant on accidental innovation.  The fact that so many companies fail to achieve a positive ROI on their R&D effort is largely due to the fact that most companies are still floundering in the muck of the accidental innovation quagmire.

But, what about patent activity?  Doesn’t that give us insight into who will be the shining star of the investment portfolio?  Well, yes it can; but you must understand how to read the tea leaves.  For example, in the data graphs shown in the Wall Street Journal, one can readily see that the innovation cycle time values for both profiled companies have been getting worse over the past four years.  Is this a clue as to why they are not the financial performance leaders?

Patents, as indicators of innovation, are useful.  Within any given industry, there is a certain proclivity toward patent activity.  This means that while the ratio of R&D investment to patent activity will vary from industry to industry, within a given industry it is possible to make a comparison.  But, what do you compare?  The answer to this question is not for the squeamish. 

Let’s begin with the basics.  Patent activity, measured in terms of applications and grants, is an indicator of the innovation efficiency of an organization.  To understand that, you must consider the ratio of R&D spend to intellectual property generated.  If you don’t know the R&D spend figures, you can get a rough, but useful, measure by using top line revenue.  The simple idea here is that it is much more significant when a $100 million company has 20 filings that it is when a $10 billion company has this same IP output.  Interesting?  Yes, but there is more to think about.

Where are the companies putting their resources?  To gain insights into this, you will need to consider the IPC classes of patent filings to get a rough idea of the technology area in which a company is investing.  Are they investing in exciting markets, or are they investing in tired markets?  You can peel the onion back even further.  By looking at the details of the technologies being developed, you can understand if, within their chosen markets, they are developing technologies on the rising slope of the technology S-curve as opposed to ones that are near the end of their life cycle.

While this is somewhat simplified and I have covered only a few of the basics, I hope this provides some useful insights.  Patent records are very interesting sources of information.  If you have access to the right tools, they can provide valuable insights into a company.  What is more interesting is that they are also tremendous sources of insights for innovation practitioners.  But that is a topic for another post.