Links

There’s a terrific post and debate over at the IAM Blog about the apparent collapse in the intangible values of companies. This arose out of both a very stimulating blog post by Pat Sullivan on the fallacy of the common intangible value concept derived from corporate securities pricing, and also an article in this month’s IAM by Nir Kossovsky about what that does or does not mean about the collapse of securities recently. As company valuations collapse in the current recession, does that say anything about the real value of IP? It’s a great question, and one that I think is ready for a serious answer. The blog post is great but the comments (by many leading thinkers in this field) are even better.

I personally think this forces all of us to think in a much more realistic and sophisticated way about what IP value is and how it is defined, created, realized, and transferred. That has to be a good thing.

I have a lot of perspectives on this myself that I will try to articulate in future posts. In particular, I have some interesting and unique data that seems to indicate that market valuations of IP are strongly cyclical - that is, they do go down in recessions. But that is for a future post. For now, I am appreciating the frank and probing conversation started by Sullivan and Kossovsky and carried on by many others. Bravo!

There were not one but two very interesting reports in the past 48 hours coming out of Scotland. The first was a particularly harsh critique of Scottish efforts to commercialize IP from its Universities. Robert Hannah, a partner in account firm Grant Thornton’s technology industry group, laid blame for poor performance on a lack of management expertise, particularly in raising investment. He called for improvements in management education, but didn’t stop there. He went so far as to suggest that Scotland should spend “serious money” to “buy in” management experts from the US “who have done it before.” Hannah’s comments came in response to a report from Targeting Innovation which advocated for more concentrated funding in fewer university spin-outs to improve their chances for success.

The second piece of innovation news was an announcement by Perth-based venture investors Braveheart of a 15-year commercialization agreement with Aberdeen University. The deal gives Braveheart first refusal rights to IP in certain areas, and appears to offer at least £5m over 5 years, with a dedicated fund thereafter that will include other investors. Braveheart also has similar deals with the University of Strathclyde and the University of Edinburgh. The stated objective is the fill the proverbial “funding gap” and accelerate Scotland’s success in IP commercialization. This kind of long-term partnership between investors and universities seems to be getting more popular.