INVENTING INNOVATIVE ENTERPRISES - STARTUPs, OPEN INNOVATION, INCUBATION, INVENTIONS

 

On 18th July 2022, I was invited to conduct a half-day workshop at VVIET MYSURU, Entrepreneurship Development Cell. It was attended by about 100 students and faculty members.

 

The key points are 

1. Invent a solution  or a venture using sixth wave of innovation technologies or changes http://www.crafitti.com/sixth-woi.html

2. Create a Lean Canvas

3. Customer value framework is essential 

4. Invent using TRIZ 

5. minimum viable product needs a plan for verification  and validation of all assumptions hypothesis

6. use the Goal Canvas for continuous evolution of MVP

7. Use Crafitti idea Journal weekly capturing problem  and ideation

8. Create a White Paper for your product or venture 

9. Continuously keep on inventing 

10. Prepare an invention disclosure even if your venture is not inventive 

 

 

Google Trends - Patents, Innovation, Invention, Globalization, Complexity

Software, Business Method and Traditional Patents

THE PROBLEMS WITH SOFTWARE AND BUSINESS METHOD PATENTS

Why Software and Business Methods are different?

Software innovations typically have extremely fine granularity of code-level subroutines while business methods have a coarse level granularity. Although software patents and business method patents overlap and are often difficult to distinguish, they actually represent problems associated with opposite ends of the granularity spectrum. Table above depicts the differences between software inventions, Business Method inventions and other discrete technological inventions such as Chemical and Pharmaceuticals , where patent systems have stood perfectly well so far.

Business method patents as seen from the above analysis, are not only difficult to define, they are usually over broad. BMP also are not really known to foster innovation and creativity as they are not usually known or accessed by innovators in the field – thereby defeating the very purpose of Intellectual property rights. The fact that innovation in software is voluminous and incremental raises profound practical problems in administering the patent system. The ease of creating functionality in software means that there is a huge amount of prior art at all levels of granularity, much of it dating from the period before patents were routinely granted and much of it undocumented. The documentation in source code disappears when the program is compiled. Software is commonly designed to be intuitive and user friendly, so that it can be used without reference to documentation.

Uselessness of Patents

Well, if you were waiting to verify the assertion that Patents indeed were useless - here comes the evidence from empirical research on cost and benefits of holding patent rights.

The book is called Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk.

The author's interview at Forbes is really an eye opener - for people who have been following blind anyway...
Their conclusion
Meurer and Bessen concluded that in every industry, except pharmaceuticals and biotech, publicly traded companies spend more money litigating to protect existing patents and paying fees to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office than they earn from the same patents. (Bessen and Meurer evaluated patents issued by all publicly traded companies between 1984 and 1999.)