Moving Nanotechnology Toward the Market: Business Strategy and IP Management in the Value Chain
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1209-P05-03
MOVING NANOTECHNOLOGY TOWARD THE MARKET: BUSINESS STRATEGY AND IP MANAGEMENT IN THE VALUE CHAIN Sara Giordani TTP Lab, Technology Transfer Program & Laboratory Piazza Matteotti 17, I-36100 Vicenza (Italy)
ABSTRACT The idea that nanotechnologies have the potential to transform different industry sectors and impact on various market segments is receiving large support and contributions from international economic organisations’ reports, research institutions’ newsletters, academics’ and management scholars’ papers and consulting firms’ articles. The patent landscape, with its burgeoning number of patent filings, and the patent offices worldwide reporting on the increasing number of patent applications in the nanotechnology field, appear as complementary indicators of this trend. As nanosciences research and engineering efforts made feasible the attractive promise of closing the gap between research and industrialization, research outcomes and applications were protected for exclusive exploitation via patent filing and patent portfolio building. The challenges and strategic choices, which are presented to the management and companies’ leaders in terms of intellectual property management and exploitation strategy, have raised the interest of several authors. Within the present research project, this paper describes intellectual property management practices that have been examined as they have been adopted by a group of European enterprises, all small and medium sized enterprises, which operate in the nanotechnology sector. The study aimed at recognizing and identifying one or more paradigmatic approaches from which models could be derived for the management of patents and technologies, in the form of consistent sets of decisions about strategy, management, organization, inter-organizational behaviours, applied by the enterprises as they operate and interact in one or more nanotechnology-added or nanotechnology-enabled value chains. Four relevant configurations for the chosen variables have been identified: four profiles could be significantly placed and integrated in the proposed interpretative model, taking into account the correlations between and among the building blocks and the influential external elements, which has been considered in the model. INTRODUCTION In the middle of last century emerged the idea that the main drivers of the overall economic development and wealth creation were progressively moving away from traditional sectors in favor of promising high technology ones, where the competitive advantages were to be found in knowledge, innovativeness and creativity [1]. Since this paradigm made its way in the business sphere, even more impact had activities like the management of knowledge and innovation, the development and acquisition of technologies, the organization of resources, assets’ valorization and market access, strategy and competitive development [2, 3].
In this scenario the management and valorization of intangibles and intellectual property rights (IPRs) drove unprecedented a
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