Is your university or start-up positioned to generate the best possible new ideas, and is your environment such that the only the best ideas will go forward? One of the best ways to ensure a positive answer to these questions is to conduct an audit of your organization’s ‘idea environment,’ says patent attorney Matt Buchanan. “It’s critical that everyone on the audit team understand the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of the current idea capture and management system . . . and the impact that has on the organization’s idea portfolio,” says Buchanan. “The goal is to start on a common page, with everyone in agreement that there is room for improvement in the current systems.”Buchanan says he always starts with a “Ten Questions About You” approach. “An open discussion of these questions has never failed to get folks thinking about improving the systems and tools an organization uses to capture and manage ideas,” he says. Here are the questions:

• If one of your organization’s inventive personnel had a “great idea” this morning, how long would it take before you knew about it?
• How confident are you that your current systems would actually capture that “great idea?”
• If you had a “great idea” this morning, what tool(s) would you use to capture it for the organization?
• After you capture your “great idea,” what do you do with it next?
• How many purpose-specific idea capture tools does your organization provide to inventive personnel?
• Does your organization provide any specialized idea capture tools that are specifically designed for key inventive personnel?
• What inputs does your organization provide to foster an idea-rich environment?
• Which department and/or employee(s) is/are responsible for processing captured ideas?
• Are captured ideas indexed in a manner that allows inventive personnel to review the current and past ideas of others?
• How many patent applications did your organization file last year?

Source: Bipo

Posted December 8th, 2009 under Intellectual Property Marketing

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