MIT Sloan Management Review

The current balkanized approach to measuring patent quality is not serving the users of the world’s patent systems.

How your IP strategy might be killing your open innovation activities — and what you can do to make it an enabler, even a builder of industrial ‘ecosystems,’ instead.

A new working paper tackles an interesting topic: the relationship between tolerance for failure and innovation. In particular, authors Xuan Tian and Tracy Y. Wang looked at venture capitalists' tolerance for failure  -- and its effect on the innovativeness of the young companies they invested in.

How has Microsoft adapted to the era of open source? A new book, Burning the Ships: Intellectual Property and the Transformation of Microsoft, gives a detailed view into that question.

A new study suggests that the effect of institutional investors on innovation in public companies is positive.

A new working paper examines the prevalence — and policy implications — of innovations that come from technology users.

How important is collaboration to breakthrough innovation? And, conversely, how significant are the contributions of inventors who work alone? In a recent working paper, Lee Fleming of Harvard and Jasjit Singh of INSEAD take a new look at this topic.

A professor’s analysis of innovation during the Great Depression suggests that downturns can present opportunities — if you have cash and good ideas.

Looking to spark innovation in your R&D workforce? Look for employees who are motivated by intellectual challenges — but not by job security.

U.S. patent law says that you can’t patent an invention that is “obvious.” However, in the 2007 case KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc. et. al., the Supreme Court raised the standard for showing that an invention is not obvious and is therefore worthy of a patent.

At many companies, intellectual property has become an area of focus. Research shows that top-management involvement in IP strategy is associated with better IP performance.

Common sense would dictate that a competitor’s breakthrough is bad news for a company. But the company’s investors might think otherwise. Anita M. McGahan, Everett W. Lord Distinguished Faculty Scholar and professor at Boston University’s School of Management, and Brian S. Silverman, J.R.S.

Intellectual property now makes up a large proportion of many companies’ market value, and IP management can no longer be left to technology or legal departments alone.

A decade ago, Procter & Gamble’s paper-towel production line in Albany, Georgia, used to jerk to an unexpected stop more than a hundred times daily, costing the company thousands of dollars each time in wasted product and lost production time.

A statute designed to encourage commercial applications of federally funded research can produce ambiguous results.

Some companies are better off making incremental improvements to their products. Others that must compete on their ability to innovate focus on breakthrough inventions. Either approach requires the exploration of a specific type of “technology landscape” and the right strategy for searching across the terrain.

A company’s interaction with the scientific community is crucial to its ability to incubate and commercialize new ideas.