Intangible assets are supremely important in modern business yet they are often frequently neglected from company strategy. This is often the case simply because advice on how to decide what it is best to do with the assets under your control is hard to find. To paraphrase an old adage, not everything that can be patented should be and not everything that should be patented can be.
Decisions on protecting your company’s assets, be they technology based, software, customer or supplier information, chemical compositions or whatever, need to reflect your commercial aims, ambitions and the environment within which you operate. It’s worth bearing in mind that patenting a technology means that, although you get a monopoly to exercise it, the full details of it are published for the world to see – and your competitors may well be looking!
In short, you need to have an intangible asset strategy (be it IA, IC or IP centric) that reflects their importance and role within your commercial strategy.
If your organisation relies heavily on its personnel then an intellectual capital (IC) approach may be the most appropriate; a technology-led business might go for an intellectual property (IP) strategy to reflect the importance of those types of asset; and still others may prefer an intellectual asset (IA) one, especially if the company has a significant amount of codified or codifiable know-how (see our About Intangibles section for more info on this). We will help you understand which approach is most appropriate for your business and help you to build it.
As with all other strategies, your intangibles strategy will need to evolve as your business grows and adapts to the changing world. We will work with you to ensure it does, and that it compliments your commercial, strategic aims.
As with all our services, strategy support is included in our unique pay-as-you-go and pay-monthly products, as well as individually – see our Products page for details.