IP Department Roadmap

Is your IP department “stuck” in a current model which reaches its limits in terms of growing workload (internally and from recent acquisitions), change of business strategy, or change of management?

You are not the only ones. Prioritisation of IP department resources to further align with the business has been a recurring challenge for those in charge of the IP function, regardless of the department size. Again in KPMG’s 2021 report “Protecting Value” (a survey among 160+ IP departments from global companies in Europe and USA), proactive advise to internal clients (R&D, marketing, management) is the top priority while cost optimisation is the second reality although case workload keeps growing. Most frequent questions from CEO and executives: do we use the right resources for the right activities? Can we achieve the same IP protection level in a different way? Is there a more optimum model budget-wise?

The aim of the course is to design an IP department roadmap. This is not a plan for a specific technology, product or business segment of your company; instead, an IP department roadmap focuses on which IP activities for your team are essential in the short- and longer-term for the business to ensure that the “right IP resources” are allocated to the “right place” and at the “right time”.

To this end, this course provides a step-by-step, matrix-based methodology with a top-down and cross-functional approach to design an IP department roadmap. This practical methodology helps analyse the current business context of a company, define the right level of IP support for the business, and find a new dialog with CEO and CFO when it comes to budget and resources.

This course is not an extensive lecture about theoretical concepts or a long list of what the IP department should ideally do in a hypothetical future. Instead, the course is 100% based on insights gained from actual practice; it provides tools, dashboards and empirical thinking directly applicable to participants’ environments. During the course, participants will experiment a mix of teamwork exercises (one extensive case study, see below, applied to the methodology) and group discussions on key aspects such as categorisation, business scoring, IP scoring, transition, resources and budget.

Case study

The Executive Committee of the company GEC is preparing a new strategy plan for 2022-2025. During the previous plan, IP budget has been reduced for cost-savings reasons: 1/3 of the portfolio has been abandoned. During the same period, competition became more aggressive, resulting in erosion of GEC’s market share and GEC being forced to redesign new product generation due to blocking IP from the competition. GEC also faces challenges internally: GEC technologies are mature (mostly obsolete) and are competing against each other for the same applications. The Executive Committee of GEC is ready to put IP back on their agenda and take measures to close the IP gap with competition by 2025.

In the pre-reader, participants will receive: GEC strategy plan for 2018-2021; 2020 revenues and margins for GEC per product and technology; Market projections for 2025; and Current IP portfolio analysis per product and technology.

Participants should count for 1-2 days of preparation before the course to get familiar with the facts of the case study.