patents | Human-Centered Change and Innovation

The Role of Intellectual Property in Innovation

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

The role of intellectual property in innovation is becoming increasingly important. Intellectual property is defined as the legal right to a creative work or invention, which includes patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets. It is a way to protect the creativity and innovation of individuals and organizations, ensuring that they can benefit from their innovations and protect them from potential competitors.

Intellectual property can be used in a number of ways to encourage innovation. For example, a patent can be used to protect an invention from being copied or used without permission. This incentivizes companies to invest in research and development, as they know that their innovations will be protected. Similarly, trademarks can be used to protect a company’s brand, preventing others from using their name or logo without permission.

Copyrights are also an important form of intellectual property, allowing creators to protect their work from being reproduced or used without their permission. This gives creators control over how their work is used, and ensures that they are properly compensated for their efforts.

Trade secrets are also used to protect valuable information about a company’s products and processes. This prevents competitors from gaining access to a company’s confidential information, which can give them an unfair advantage.

Intellectual property is essential in encouraging innovation, as it provides a financial incentive for individuals and companies to invest in research and development. It also helps protect the creativity and hard work of individuals and organizations, which is essential for a healthy and vibrant economy. Without intellectual property, it would be much harder for innovators to benefit from their creativity and inventions.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Launching an iPhone before Apple We live in an amazing age. An era when barriers to entry and barriers to scale sometimes seem to decreasing faster than the size of semiconductors. If Moore’s law states that the number of transistors per square inch doubles approximately every two years, what would you call the similar increase in speed to scale that has emerged over the past decade?

Two weeks ago I came across a couple of videos showing not one, but two different companies who are already shipping clones of Apple’s iPhone 6, a phone that Apple hasn’t yet been able to announce and get out the door?

Do we live in an amazing era or what?

The first video is of the iPhone 6 clone called the Wico i6:

The second video is of an iPhone 6 clone called the Goophone:

Now, people are very loyal to Apple (at least outside of China) and so this is likely to impact their business very little. But would the same be true in your business?

What would the impact be to your business if a competitor launched your new flagship product before you could?

Are you creating an overall solution that is more valuable than every existing alternative and likely to be widely adopted when you launch it?

If not, shouldn’t you be?

After all if you’ve been following me for any length of time you’ll know that my definition of innovation is the following:

“Innovation transforms the useful seeds of invention into widely adopted solutions valued above every existing alternative.”

By this very definition, these clones may attempt to copy the inventions contained in the iPhone 6, but if Apple has truly packed any innovation into their forthcoming handset, it will take more than copying the look and feel of their hardware and GUI to steal any of their innovation thunder.

Innovation is of course all about value, and so any true innovation will not only excel at Value Creation, but the creators will also have put a lot of effort into Value Access AND Value Translation. Follow the link for more on my value innovation framework.

So, if you link my value innovation framework together with my definition of innovation and work to satisfy the conditions of both, you’ll see it doesn’t really matter what the competition does as long as you focus on creating value in all three areas and launching a solution truly valued above every existing alternative (including copycats, clones, or pre-emptive launches), you can still have a wildly successful launch.

So, keep innovating!