Patent data produces a treasure trove of market insights, technological trends, and legal references for technologists, engineers, investors, marketers, legal professionals, and executives looking for competitive advantage.
strategy
Intellectual Property Strategy for SaaS Startups
For startup founders and entrepreneurs juggling the many hats they wear during the infant stage of their companies, success often requires becoming a jack of all trades. While it may seem expensive and time-consuming, the investment in intellectual property will protect the most valuable assets of the company and the hard work being put into other areas of the business. Moreover, securing the intellectual property rights to any proprietary products and technology will help the business stand out when seeking venture capital funding.
5 Ways Big Companies Stay Ahead of Their Competitors (Including You)
What do big companies have in their R&D toolbox that smaller companies often overlook? Competitive intelligence – what some might call snooping on the competition. Competitive intelligence research is a powerful strategy for any size company, so it pays to know more about your options. In the latest issue of Texas CEO Magazine, Steve Pearson, founder of The Pearson Strategy Group, reveals five strategies that can be used by companies of any size. He also explains how acting without research can open the door to poorly executed innovation, expensive strategy missteps, unrecovered R&D costs, risk or legal entanglements.
Sales vs. Marketing: The Small Business Dilemma
Why does marketing continue to take a backseat to sales? Perhaps my vision is skewed because the bulk of our clients are technology or manufacturing-based? The C-Suite of these companies is mainly, sometimes exclusively, technologists, engineers and scientists. Perhaps, similar to my naive understanding as a rookie engineer, they too believe that having a Chief Marketing Officer at the table is at odds with their goals? Here in Austin, my friends Jan Triplett and Francoise Luca will be debating Sales or Marketing: What comes first? on February 26.
It’s Not Time to Bury Strategy, But Digging Into Research Makes Sense
A recent Forbes article Is Strategy Dead? 7 Reasons The Answer May Be Yes caught my attention, as the writer intended. After all, strategy is a pillar of my business! I won’t offer seven counterpoints, but I will tell you from a high-level view that this death knell for strategy is premature. All businesses benefit from developing, and maintaining, a well-informed strategy. I surprise many by recommending 15 years, as they believe three to four years is sufficient and any longer term will be wasting resources. They usually cite the rapid rate of technology change as a reason not to plan so far ahead.
Outsmart the Competition Through Patent Research – 8/12/2014 CETA Symposium
Spending a fraction of your budget on comprehensive prior art research can accelerate your innovation and tip you off to competitors in your space, the founder of the Pearson Strategy Group explained at the recent Central Texas Electronics Association Symposium in Austin. Professional patent research and analysis requires expertise and tools most business people are not aware of. And high quality results can help inventors and entrepreneurs understand their competition and their opportunities, he said.
Sharpening up My Vision of Pearson’s Pyramid
My recent post Would Maslow Shop at Whole Foods? focused on the company culture established by the C-Suite and how it might be classified using Maslow’s Hierarchy as an inspiration. Readers contributed a number of supportive comments worth considering as I continue refining this idea and building my own pyramid. First, the duration of a company’s strategy is an interesting method for grouping as it is both a symptom and the cure for moving to higher levels on the pyramid. After more thought, it is more appropriate to move this to the cure and I’ll be elaborating on all of the cures in an upcoming post. Second, a number of people pointed out that employee retention rate is a very good business health metric and I totally agree…as long as this metric is not taken in isolation from other information.
And the Innovations-Strategy Survey Says…
The Pearson Strategy Group, LLC offers a free online assessment tool that provides an anonymous 5-minute method for assessing your company’s risk for falling behind in the marketplace. The assessment has been available for almost a year and it’s time to reveal the key findings. Every user completing the survey receives a summary listing the questions and individual answers. They also get a map of innovation-strategy results.
Strategic Patent Research: Tips from an Insider
Professional patent research and analysis requires expertise and tools most business people are not aware of. And high quality results can help inventors and entrepreneurs understand their competition and their opportunities, the founder of the Pearson Strategy Group explained to a recent gathering of Austin’s IEEE Central Texas Consultants Network.
Have You Protected Your Patent from Assault?
The first word of caution for patent applicants is that, unfortunately, some patent practitioners do produce garbage. I see these “bad” applications frequently. Worse still, some Patent Examiners are asleep at the switch and allow these bad applications to issue. The fatality rate might therefore reflect defendants taking a relatively inexpensive route to invalidate patents that desperately deserve euthanasia. This strategy should be compared to paying “go away” money to appease the owners. Moreover, invalidating bad patents would be a good thing for all (but the owners). No statistics, though, are yet available yet to validate/disprove this theory.