Find the tech sweet spot
- publish258
- Nov 15, 2022
- 2 min read
Updated: Apr 11
Too many miss the growth in digital transformation. So start thinking like a winner and find the tech sweet spot, says Robert Klinski at Patentship
Robert Klinski
The winners from digital transformation are those who can best configure their innovations round insights into emerging sources of value. The logic of such invention on demand depends on catching a technology at the right point, not too early, not too late, but just at the sweet spot when it stops emerging and starts to grow.
All technologies follow a lifecycle as they emerge, grow and mature. At the start, everything is new. There is no history. Comparisons are hard to draw. Platform IP can be secured at relatively little cost, even if it is hard to know which technology trend to follow and the risk-to-reward ratio is speculatively high.
At the growth stage, innovation becomes more incremental, driven more by R&D and less by inventors. Many more patents are filed, the scope for protection narrows, IP costs rise and the risk-to-reward ratios drop.
Once a technology matures, innovation plateaus, IP becomes expensive to maintain and the risk-to-reward ratio reaches its low point. Much of the budget is spent on enforcing the IP.
The focus of far too many companies is still on conservatively managing the risks in innovation and taking a view that is too centred on technology. The whole process is geared towards maintaining the status quo. By playing it safe, they end up with late-stage technologies that no one wants to buy.
• The full version of Robert Klinski's article, ‘Innovating with edge technologies appears in ‘Winning with IP: Managing intellectual property today’, third edition, Novaro Publishing, October 2022. See details here.
