Mining The Intellectual Property Buried in Your Company

Empowering your employees to harness their creative potential and fostering a culture of innovation is essential for driving your company’s success and standing out in a competitive market.

Embracing Innovation: The Key to Standing Out

Does your company truly embrace innovation as a means to stand out from competitors? Are you actively fostering a culture of innovation among your employees? When was the last time a team member stepped forward with a groundbreaking idea?

Beyond Products: Innovation in Processes

Innovation isn't just about products, features, and services; it's also about finding or creating better, more efficient ways to build and deliver them. If your employees aren't regularly bringing forth innovative solutions, it might be because they need guidance on recognizing and nurturing their ideas. Worse still, perhaps they don’t naturally look beyond existing approaches to make things better, simpler and more efficient.

Unleashing Creative Potential through Invention Mining

Encouraging brainstorming sessions, like "invention mining," with diverse groups of employees can help uncover the innovative potential within your product offerings and are an excellent way to promote innovative thinking. These sessions should be performed quarterly with different groups of employees; not only the designers, but those testing, manufacturing and delivering the product. Such brainstorming sessions can be extremely useful in extracting and documenting the innovation underlying your product offerings.

The most impactful piece of advice we can offer is: Don't limit your exploration to what's already in place; consider other potential applications for features or different approaches that could be taken if alternative technologies were available. Innovation doesn't have to be complicated; often, the most impactful ideas are surprisingly simple. As long as an idea is novel and non-obvious to someone skilled in the art, it should be treated as an innovation.

Empowering Employees to Innovate

By empowering employees to identify and champion innovation, they will start to understand the value of innovating and will take pride in finding better solutions. Recognizing and rewarding innovation milestones, such as obtaining a patent, can boost morale and encourage further innovation. Not only will you be able to protect some of these innovations but you will also end up with better products or services!

Protecting Your Innovations

Inventions should be carefully documented, and a decision should be made regarding the best way to protect them. Remember that trade secrets are a viable and cost-effective alternative to patents, as long as they can be effectively protected since reverse engineering is legal.

You should also maintain an innovation “landscape” which shows where your solutions (products or services) are innovative and exactly what is protected. Keep these ideas well organized and documented; they are invaluable during due diligence.

The Benefits of an Innovation-Minded Culture

By fostering an innovation-minded culture, you will quickly see the benefits in your product offerings and your success in the market. Imagine the wealth of innovation that could drive your company to the next level of success!

Innovation can be hiding right under your nose in the form of your creative employees. By fostering the right type of culture, you can ensure that your team feels supported and that you are open to uncovering the hidden potential within your company. At Stratford Intellectual Property, we specialize in helping businesses tap into this buried treasure. We can host mining sessions and provide the guidance you need to turn innovative ideas into reality. Contact us today to learn how our expert services can support your journey toward sustained innovation and growth.

About the Author

Natalie Giroux is a pragmatic achiever with extensive experience in the areas of strategic intellectual property management, network performance engineering, traffic management, technical due diligence. She has been with Stratford  for over eight years and has been providing strategic virtual IP management services for several small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). She is passionate about maximizing the value of innovation, to learn more contact Natalie.