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Similaire à Creative Strategies
Similaire à Creative Strategies (20)
Creative Strategies
- 1. Creative Strategies for Untapped Intellectual Assets
- 14. Next Example 2
- 20. SCWO of Paper Mill Sludge
- 27. Next Example 3
Notes de l'éditeur
- My name is Dr. Carol Blaney I’ll be touching on some personal experiences with the fate of intellectual assets – patents. I was with Kimberly-Clark Corporation for 15 years – a research&development engineer. I observed many many inventions birth, mature, some flourished, some died, and some found new homes. Looking back I would have done some things differently, but I also know what worked, and I see it more now from a much larger perspective than before. In fact the book by Lindsay et.al., “CONQUERING INNOVAGTION FATIGUE”, helped expand my perspective along with the wisdom of time. Background: I left KC a few years back to start Blaney Consuting where I’ve been able to focus more on the in-depth science of solving unsolvable problems .
- Goal: Assume your company has Untapped assets: Patents that seemed like a good idea at the time but…. don’t fit in with the immediate business plan. Maybe the business plan changed; maybe management changed. But the invention is a big chunk of spent money , spent manpower , s pent time , and potential profits . Last line: and this includes selling a roll good to someone else to make the invention.
- Lindsay et.al book points out that Even though the inventor thinks his patent might be worth a billion dollars, In reality, single patents are commonly worth a mere 100,000.00, not millions…. But at the very least it motivates the inventors… And Revenue can be very significant if it is a ‘group’ of patents/trade secrets Also perhaps it’s an environemntal patent, so if anyone used it, good for image. And last but not least, in fact nowadays most importantly, altruism is a good thing. It even increases profits, look at social media marketing, altruism really does help a company.
- Next, some real examples. Failures are, for me, a good thing, as I’ve come to learn. They seem like RATS, you want to catch and destroy them, but What if a rat was a golden rat – then you’d want to catch it and extract value from it. Once or twice, I was too proud, too impatient, I overvalued my patents, and I was blind to a great marketing opportunity, So, I failed, and time passed, and I see just what went wrong. And what went right with the successes.
- First customer: Young women who wear thong panties. – new marketing needed: making pantiliners sexy. market would grow with time.– advantage to thong pad – no leaks -- -- PackagedFacts.com website: Feminine Products: $2.7 MM market in US Feminine Protection Category to Grow 3% Annually 50 Million Monthly Users of Pads Only a fifth Are Heavy Users – all the others could use this new thong pad.
- Failure to put women in management of a company that sells products to females is (IMHO) a big mistake Company culture too pervasive; those in management too ‘alike’ – white male wisconsin bible belt traditional prudish… The idea was good but… invisible.. So then what happened?
- How did I feel about this? Well, it just confirmed I’m a visionary, I suppose, -- -- but perhaps I was working at the wrong company. I’m glad to see the idea is being used. Makes me feel good… And make me feel Motivated to keep being a visionary and now with more confidence … And maybe more marketing saavy too...
- SCFs: What are they? Fluids above their critical temperature and critical pressure. Very very dense gas with special properties. (4 th state of matter.) If you take the advantages of a gas and the advantages of a liquid and combine them:, you Get the best of both worlds: SCF has the Density and solvent powers of a liquid, but the high diffusivities and compressibilities of a gas. Two fluids are of special importance:
- Here is a typical batch sc-co2 process. We obtained patents on cleaning up secondary fibers. Tetra chloro dibenzo dioxin and tetra choloro dibenzo furan = “dioxins” (formed during chlorine bleaching of cellulosic material)
- Universities, governments, and private companies expressed interest in technology But… since not mandated, why bother? We have enough fires to put out right now… Also, “Supercritical” was a word that scared people.
- But… since not mandated, why bother? We have enough fires to put out right now… Also, “Supercritical” was a word that scared people. Global Tech Transfer group – found a home.
- Sludge from paper mills went to landfills Need better solution: Incineration Gov. of Texas – declared moratorium on new incineration plants And for good reason: creates dioxins, adds to environental load (dioxins hard to destroy, builds up in fat tissue over time, mimics hormones)
- We were ready to partner but… management changed.
- Lindsay et.al. Ch. 5 – innovator deficiencies: poor marketing. In the 1970’s there was a famous physicist, archibald wheeler, who coined the term Black Hole . It stuck. It inspired the world to romanticize abovut astronomy and transformed science fiction as well. He named it wisely. Black Hole. Looking back, for Supercritical Fluiid Technology, a better approach would have been something like this: OK, ‘supercritical’ – it’s not what you think. The only thing super is the result, and the only thing critical is -- if you ignore this technology you are going to lose out big time because it’s taking over all facets of industry – food, beverages, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, herbal products, industrial, coatings, sludge treatment, fiber treatment, polymer processing, green tech… etc…
- TechTransfer group, provided needed manpower to find an outside home for technology. Tax write-offs received more than justifies this group Murphy’s law, however, guarantees an audit. Here is where the inventor is direly needed once again. Without the inventor involved (me) to successfully defend the value and merit of technololgy, Auditor would not have grasped the technology. He would have been turned off by the cursed word ‘supercritical’. HE needed it simplified, explained. Finally: having technology kept alive helps company keep green identity (PR) – As you’ve heard in NPR news, KC prides itself in environmental initiatives. Also, it motivates inventor to keep on inventing new things. But as Lindsay et.al. book points out, the value of a patent is usually much less than the inventor might imagine. And In this case, the IRS felt it was worth even less. But, happily, still worth the effort. So it wasn’t tens of millions $$$ but certainly it paid the salaries of the group many times over.
- Our 3 rd and last example
- Global tech transfer had a big pile of odor control technogy patents, unused. They wanted to find all possible uses for odor control… I’m talking ALL possible remote needs for odor control. They wanted to leave no stone unturned They were wise to realize that … you just Can’t easily do such a tedious project in-house (To do this type of search, across the board, one needs long uninterrupted stints of time) So they called blaney consulting, I did it in a few weeks, almost collapsed, gave them a giant spreadsheet as big as a book, completely organized and categorized. Saved them a ton of time.
- The key point is that certain assets -- (such as ideas, unused inventions, even assets in the form of problems -- which are related to ideas) -- can be utilized by outsourcing certain types of work that can’t be done in house . In this case, as an outside consultant, I was able to provide a quick and thorough map of all uses for odor technologies so the global tech transfer group could immediately begin identifying customers. I had no interruptions to do the work so it was fast. (analogy: writing a book: it is said that if a writer misses more than one day of writing his story, the writer loses a month. This is b/c it isn’t fresh on her mind.) In yet another case, I took a problem Clopay had… an unsolvable problem… and turned it into an intellectual asset by solving that problem -- Theory, Mathematical modeling and testing were used to design a new material. – and then, letting them market it.
- Diversity – Best case, management should include people that actually understand the products sold Marketing – think like Archibald Wheeler – Black Holes brings romance to science; supercritical scares laymen off. Inventor is sometimes the only one who can keep the idea alive – translate science to layman terms with simplification, good analogies. Outsource: some tasks are best done NOT in-house (because they are tedious, time-consuming, and need long stretches of time with no interruptions – which does not occur in a normal corporate environment. -- That is the benefit of consulting work: I actually have time to tackle in depth projects impossible to attempt in-house. (and yes that was a plug. Thanks so much for your attention. Are there any questions?)