Intellectual Property: The Secret Sauce Of Great Products; Forbes, 12/7/15

David Pridham, Forbes; Intellectual Property: The Secret Sauce Of Great Products:

"Intellectual property (IP) is much in the news of late. But unfortunately, the coverage is mostly about patent litigation and patent reform.

Lost in all this reportage is the positive and powerful role IP plays outside of the courtroom — in the daily operations of the enterprise. Here, largely unnoticed, IP serves as one of the key drivers of business success in today’s Knowledge Economy.

Take corporate revenues. These are often heavily dependent upon intellectual property — margins and market share are buttressed by brands, trademarks and patents, after all — but this fact is largely unreported by the media. Similarly, IP and other intangible assets, while compromising up to 80% of the market value of public companies today, are rarely reflected on corporate balance sheets, thanks to a 600-year-old accounting system designed for a bygone era in which tangible assets like plant, equipment, and raw materials were the chief sources of wealth.

It’s no surprise, then, that some people call IP “the secret sauce of corporate value creation.”

I’ll be revealing many of IP’s secrets with this new “IP at Work” column you’re reading — the first-ever regular column in a mainstream business publication that focuses on the ways that intellectual property can be deployed inside the enterprise to enhance corporate performance."