Intellectual property

People aren’t getting dumber, but they’re often treated that way. Politicians, educators, and the media assume the public is uncomfortable with nuance and grateful for prescribed solutions. Business, too, is being progressively dumbed down, not only by book authors who teach management by parable but also by managers themselves. Ironically, the infantilization of work is […]

Open innovation platforms are making it easier.

Most executives think they’re security conscious—they change their passwords and shred important documents and so forth. But what rarely crosses their minds, says espionage expert H. Keith Melton, is that cloak-and-dagger types really are after their valuables. Just because you’re not paranoid, he observes, doesn’t mean they’re not following you. Melton, the author of Ultimate […]

Innovation deserves protection.

Last week, I wrote about the dangers of overly relying on quantitative market research when developing innovation opportunities. A tendency to seek "safety...

The hope that an entrepreneurial industry can help reverse global warming misses one critical point: Innovation takes time. Lots of time.

They restrict employee mobility.

Procter & Gamble’s radical strategy of open innovation now produces more than 35% of the company’s innovations and billions of dollars in revenue.

Strategies to help companies mitigate the legal risk and ensure they’re in compliance with the law.

Today's most successful companies are rethinking traditional notions of ownership.

Paying for stolen data - even when it's your own - comes with substantial legal and reputational risks.

Should companies control all the ways people experience art?

Neither markets nor managers accurately value investments in intangibles like R&D, studies show. The result: misallocated resources. The solution: read on.

Squeezing today’s innovations into yesterday’s system simply won’t work.

Sheldon Bloomfield, senior vice-president of character properties for Multi-Media Worldwide, has a hit with Baby Ruby. Originally a children's book character,...

In 1976, Genentech, the first biotechnology company, was founded by a young venture capitalist and a university professor to exploit recombinant DNA technology....

Plenty of companies have tried—and failed—to increase innovation. Here’s how to apply the lessons of free trade to the market for new ideas.

The finding: Innovations developed by individuals who give them away increasingly compete with patent-protected, for-profit innovations in many parts of the economy. The research: Recent studies of representative samples of adults in the U.S., Japan, and the UK have found that many consumer products are developed by consumers themselves instead of by companies intending to […]

A new study shows that during the Cold War, corporate spying generated significant economic returns for East German companies. It was so successful, in...

Legal strategies aren’t enough to deal with these predators of the IP world. You need to rethink your approach to R&D.

After more than a decade of development, US-based Synergy Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Synergy) received marketing approval from the US Federal Drug Administration...

Abbott Labs has reached an impasse with the Brazilian government in negotiations over the pricing of a new anti-AIDS drug, Kaletra. The Brazilian government...

MAN B&W Diesel (MBD), a subsidiary of MAN AG, had become very successful by having its large two-stroke diesel engines produced under licence in Asia....

Discusses the shortcomings of the current "rules of thumb" for intellectual asset valuation in the context of intellectual property licensing transactions....

The CEO of Ganeden Biotech, a small firm with several viable probiotic products but limited resources, must decide what markets to invest in and what...

This 2014 case describes how the Los Angeles-based Magnolia Community Initiative (MCI) - a network of 70 government, nonprofit and for-profit organizations...

In an effort to capture market share in the children's foods category, Disney Consumer Products (DCP) debuted a broad line of "better for you" foods,...

Executives at Sony Music Entertainment faced a dilemma: a user-generated video featuring controversial artist Chris Brown's music was netting millions...

The case documents how Naresh Goyal, chairman of Jet Airways (India) Limited founded the airline and related business group, and built the 'Jet Airways'...

On May 29, 2020, the World Health Organization launched the COVID-19 Technologies Access Pool (C-TAP) with the aim of making pandemic-related technologies-specifically,...

China's leading beverage company, Hangzhou Wahaha Group (Wahaha), and the French beverage giant, Groupe Danone (Danone), formed a strategic Joint Venture...

Supplement to case 396156. Presents a series of multiple choice options to be distributed and discussed in class.

This case presents the Myelin Repair Foundation's accelerated research collaboration model for drug discovery. It highlights the challenges of building...

Describes advantages and disadvantages of alliances (including joint ventures and licensing agreements).

Examines the history of Iridium Communications, a provider of mobile satellite services. Discusses the genesis of Iridium's technical design, then follows...

Microsoft and IBM have excluded Sun Microsystems from the board of the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I), an industry consortium that...

Delta Electronics, the world's largest manufacturer of switching power supplies, hoped to enter the market for gasoline-electric hybrid power trains for...

In late 2013, Rajeev Kulkarni needed to decide how best to facilitate the emergence of a broad base of users and content to promote the sale of 3D Systems's...

The management team of Marvel Enterprises, known for its universe of superhero characters that includes Spider-Man, the Hulk, and X-Men, must reevaluate...

This explores the valuation of an opportunity to license a compound before it enters clinical trials. Describes Merck's decision tree evaluation process...

People aren’t getting dumber, but they’re often treated that way. Politicians, educators, and the media assume the public is uncomfortable with nuance and grateful for prescribed solutions. Business, too, is being progressively dumbed down, not only by book authors who teach management by parable but also by managers themselves. Ironically, the infantilization of work is […]

Open innovation platforms are making it easier.

Most executives think they’re security conscious—they change their passwords and shred important documents and so forth. But what rarely crosses their minds, says espionage expert H. Keith Melton, is that cloak-and-dagger types really are after their valuables. Just because you’re not paranoid, he observes, doesn’t mean they’re not following you. Melton, the author of Ultimate […]

Innovation deserves protection.

After more than a decade of development, US-based Synergy Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Synergy) received marketing approval from the US Federal Drug Administration...

Last week, I wrote about the dangers of overly relying on quantitative market research when developing innovation opportunities. A tendency to seek "safety...

Abbott Labs has reached an impasse with the Brazilian government in negotiations over the pricing of a new anti-AIDS drug, Kaletra. The Brazilian government...

The hope that an entrepreneurial industry can help reverse global warming misses one critical point: Innovation takes time. Lots of time.

They restrict employee mobility.

Procter & Gamble’s radical strategy of open innovation now produces more than 35% of the company’s innovations and billions of dollars in revenue.