Management, Economics and IP Law of Open Distributed Innovation (MELT)

Start date 26/06/2009
End date The project is closed: 26/06/2013


Management, Economics and IP Law of Open Distributed Innovation (MELT):

The “MELT-Project” – melting management, economics, law and technology. A project within VINNOVA’s program “Innovative Companies: Management of Product Innovation”.

 

This project aims to develop knowledge, skills and tools for analyzing and managing various R&D, innovation and business development processes in the industrial and services sectors more efficiently and effectively, with special focus on proper use of intellectual property (IP) regimes, IP contracts and IP management skills, for application in internal R&D, mergers & acquisitions, spin-offs & spin-outs, technology collaborations (e.g. in form of open or semi-open distributed innovation), joint ventures, licensing in/out, divestments (e.g. via patent auctioning), and  technology and competitor intelligence.

MELT-logo-liten.jpg

 


Project leader
Ove Granstrand
External partners

Thomas Ewing, externally financed doctoral student, Chalmers

Prof. Bengt Domeij (Uppsala University, Dept. of Law)

Prof. So Young Sohn (Yonsei University)

Dr. Marcel Bogers (University of Southern Denmark)

Dr. Frank Tietze (University of Kiel)

Prof. Niklas Bruun (Hanken School of Economics)

Research overview

Download poster with overview of the reasearch project.

     http://document.chalmers.se/download?docid=1644510173


Various global techno-economic trends are today at play in the business arena, such as technological convergence (e.g. between medicine and technology, bio-tech, IT-telecom, nano-technologies, mecha-tronics etc.), technological diversification, technological levelling of many powerful new players and speedier innovation and substitution on a global scale.

These trends foster more complex and expansive, but also potentially more profitable innovation and business development processes (e.g. open distributed innovation processes), involving players on a wide front - large/small, young/old, leading/following companies, sectors and countries. This in turn calls for and fosters new developments in the areas of R&D/technology/innovation management.

An increasingly important management area in this context is IP (intellectual property) management since the recent advent of the “pro-IP era” and the use of IPRs and IP contracting for governance rather than solely traditional protection of R&D, innovation and business development processes.

The purpose of this project is to develop knowledge, skills and tools for analyzing and managing various R&D, innovation and business development processes in industry and services more efficiently and effectively in general but especially through use of proper IP regimes, IP contracts and IPM skills, in in-house R&D, mergers, acquisitions, spin-offs, technology collaborations (e.g. in form of open or semi-open distributed innovation), joint ventures, licensing in/out, divestment (e.g. through patent auctioning) and technology and competitor intelligence.

The design of the project consists of an ´umbrella part´ with a general methodology for innovation and IP audits and techno-economic systems analysis together with a portfolio of sub-studies designed in cooperation with partners. These sub-studies include studies of, for example:

  •     Valuation, IP strategies and pricing of new technologies
  •     Value based development of new technologies
  •     IP and finance strategies for start-ups
  •     Generalizability of open source collaboration models
  •     and semi-open IP regime designs
  •     New business models for technology exploitation, know-how
  •     and patent licensing
  •     Standard-setting and IP
  •     Efficiency and stability of technology collaborations
  •     Patent information and publication analysis
  •     How to link and integrate business strategies, technology strategies
  •     and IP strategies
  •     New products and services within the IIP-area'

The project is conducted as a collaborative multi-client project, with research team members distributed across management, economics, law and technology disciplines, and across academic and industrial organizations, gender and locations, in close university/industry collaboration with selected consultants and industrial companies as partners. Partner companies provide cases (for example large projects of specific problems) for analysis (e.g. in form of innovation and IP audits – IIP-audits) on company sites. On this basis strategies, tools and models will be developed under a multi-year feedback period.

Results from the project are fed back to partners and industry/academia through various modes of interaction, e.g. on-site workshops, CTO-seminars, road seminars, awareness raising campaigns in companies and industry associations, plus articles, a book and various teaching material.

Published: Mon 28 Oct 2013.