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1、Discovering New Value in Intellectual Property by Kevin G. Rivette and David Kline Reprint r00109 2 harvard business reviewJanuaryFebruary 2000 by Kevin G.Rivette and David Kline Discovering NewValue in Intellectual Property ichard Thoman is not your typical chief executive officer. Most Fortune 500
2、 CEOs, when asked how they intend to increase share- holder value, will talk about increasing sales, creating new leading-edge product lines, or pursuing mergers and acquisitions. But Thoman, who was appointed CEO of the $20 billion Xerox Corporation last summer, isnt con- tent with such conventiona
3、l strategies. He believes one of the strategic keys to Xeroxs future is something so intangible, so invisible to traditional bottom- line thinking and corporate practice, that it doesnt even show up on the bal- ance sheet. “My focus is intellectual property,” he declares. “Im convinced that the mana
4、gement of intellectual property is how value added is going to be created at Xerox. And not just here, either. Increasingly, companies that are good at managing IP will win. The ones that arent will lose.” R More companies are learning to exploit patents as potent competitive weapons and as a source
5、 of unexpected revenues. Think clustering, bracketing,and mapping. Copyright 1999 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved.3 THINKING ABOUT Intellectual property? Five years ago, that phrase wasnt even in the vocabu- laries of many CEOs, let alone a part of their business
6、 strategies. Indeed, many chief executives still regard patents, trademarks, copyrights, and other forms of intellectual property as legal matters best left to the corporate attorneys to fuss over while the CEOs concentrate on the truly strategic stuff of competi- tive warfare. Not Thoman. Where oth
7、ers see mere legal instruments, he sees business tools. And where others see obscure pieces of paper gathering dust in the cor- porate legal office, he sees “Rembrandts in the attic” waiting to be exploited for profi t and competitive advantage. To understand why Thoman thinks that way, you have to
8、go back to his days as chief fi nancial officer at IBM. There, he saw fi rsthand how an aggres- sive intellectual-property effort boosted annual patent-licensing royalties a ARTWORK BY KATHERINE MAHONEY phenomenal 3,300% from $30 mil- lion in 1990 to nearly $1 billion to- day. This $1billion per yea
9、r, it should be noted, is largely free cash fl owa recurring net revenue stream that represents one-ninth of IBMs annual pretax profits. That money goes straight to the bottom line. To match that sort of net revenue stream, IBM would have to sell roughly $20 bil- lion worth of additional products ea
10、ch year, or an amount equal to one- fourth its worldwide sales. Thoman is taking a similar ap- proach to IP management at Xerox. He plans to boost the copier and doc- ument management companys patent royalties from just under $10 million to more than $200 mil- lion annually within two years. And tha
11、ts not all. Just as IBM now lever- ages its patents for strategic and eco- nomic gain Big Blue used them as the currency for $30 billion worth of new component sales in 1999 Thoman also believes that Xeroxs rich portfolio of patents could be- come passports to lucrative new market opportunities. He
12、believes patents could help the company re- gain its leadership role in the global technology industry. Thomans concentration on intel- lectual property marks him as one of a new breed of chief executive. These IP-savvy business leaders be- lieve that, in a world where battles are increasingly being
13、 waged not for control of markets or raw materials but for the rights to new ideas and in- novations, the management of intel- lectual property must become a core competence of the successful enter- prise. Though still a minority among their peers, they nonetheless lead some of Americas most success
14、ful companies, including Microsoft, Lu- cent, IBM, Dell, Dow Chemical, and Gillette. These leaders all recognize that the knowledge economy has given rise to a new ecology of compe- tition in which intellectual assets rather than physical assets are the principal wellsprings of shareholder wealth an
15、d competitive advantage. Therein lies one of the next great corporate challenges: figuring out how to unlock the hidden power of patents. In this article, we will dem- onstrate how companies can manage and deploy their patents not just as legal instruments but also as power- ful fi nancial assets an
16、d competitive weapons that can enhance their com- mercial success and increase share- holder wealth. We use the terms patents and intellectual property in- terchangeably in this article, but patents are actually only one type of intellectual property (or legally pro- tected intellectual assets); others in- clude trade secrets, trademarks, and copyrights. We focus on patents for two reasons. First, patents are the most tangible form of intellectual property, they enjoy the strongest le-
