How to protect your company’s inventions

In a commentary, SMU Assistant Professor of Strategic Management Reddi Kotha highlighted an important tension in the invention and innovation process that company Chief Innovation Officers (CIOs) need to monitor: inventors and innovators need to source knowledge from outside the firm, but sourcing knowledge from outside brings the risk that you may have to share ownership of the invention that results. Assistant Prof Kotha shared about his research into the practices of a pioneering university technology transfer office that regularly confronts this issue. His research has uncovered insights into IP protection that can help CIOs seeking to manage innovation in an age of open communication. They have developed an interactive tool that highlights which issues are especially salient at which stage of the scientific innovation process.