Consider the case of TechnoDevelop, a local company that sells licences for its IP related to biomedical devices and paperless business-to-consumer communications. Prakash Naidu – a leader in design for automation with decades of experience in biotechnology, robotics, design and manufacturing in Canada, the U.S., and abroad – and Kshirsagar Naidu, a Carleton University alumnus with specialization in software, control and systems engineering technologies, are the founders.
TechnoDevelop is developing a thermal pixel array device that can be used in pain research, human machine interfaces and infotainment as well as by business, government and emergency organizations to communicate with households without using paper. Field trials for the hospital environment are taking place in Toronto. Other applications are under development.
The business-to-consumer communications process is anchored around a network of electronic billboards that bring flyers into peoples’ homes, eliminating the use of paper. Businesses and government organizations can send advertising, promotional, or informative flyers to households under the system.
In addition, emergency service providers can send pictorial information to senior citizens, those with hearing or small text reading challenges, people who can’t read an official language or have difficulties interpreting accents. These individuals benefit from easier and more definitive comprehension relative to phone communications.
The target market for the IP related to biomedical devices, in contrast, is comprised of manufacturers of biomedical equipment, human machine interfaces and entertainment devices. The target market for the IP related to the business process is comprised of providers of advertising and promotion services.
According to Mr. Naidu, to succeed a young company engaged in IP entrepreneurship must identify technology gaps quickly, reduce the cost of developing and testing the prototypes that fill these technology gaps, work around IP developed by others, protect IP it develops and deliver compelling value to go-to-market partners.
TechnoDevelop does exactly this – it interacts with suppliers and buyers of new technology that are part of the Lead to Win ecosystem to identify technology gaps, and acts quickly to fill them. The company leverages partner and affiliate resources in Bangalore, India to augment high-talent R&D manpower, prototypes, developing and testing facilities, and to reduce the cost of patent searches.
TechnoDevelop’s customers are located in North America and gain from the company’s competitive cost-benefit value proposition. While founders of innovative companies may have an innovative business or technology idea, it may not be possible to commercialize it unless the company can overcome the barriers put up by others in the form of IP protection, and can also put up barriers themselves by protecting the IP it develops.
IP protection, after all, is expensive. The cost of a patent prosecution is in the tens of thousands of dollars while the cost of infringement litigation is in the millions of dollars. The high cost of IP protection is a major obstacle that companies engaged in IP entrepreneurship must overcome.
In the biomedical space, TechnoDevelop partners with leading research labs, hospitals, patent law firms, and licensing and enforcement agencies. For example, the Toronto Rehabilitation Hospital, a leader in the field of biomedical research, is its partner in the development of thermal stimulation devices. This fact will enhance the value of the technology the company is developing, and at the same time the developed technology contributes towards the continued great work by the hospital.
In the paperless business-to-consumer communication processes space, the company partners with distributors of information who can gain value from new ways to advertise and promote to consumers.
A vendor-neutral business ecosystem must fulfil the diverse needs of its habitats, and IP entrepreneurship increases the health of a business ecosystem by increasing company and market offer diversity. IP entrepreneurship also introduces new challenges to the business ecosystem – founders of companies engaged in IP entrepreneurship perceive the relevance of the mechanics of patent drafting, IP rights protection and the relationship between IP professionals and company founders differently than do top management teams of small companies that develop and sell products, services, and solutions.
Tony Bailetti is an associate professor at Carleton University and the head of Lead to Win, a vendor-neutral business ecosystem.
