By Francis Moran
I have shamelessly adapted the headline of this post from a Wall Street Journal article I read on the weekend that reviewed two excellent books tracking the ascendancy of Africa over the past decade and predicting that the continent’s rise as an economic force to be reckoned with would continue in similar fashion for the next decade. Acknowledging the structural problems many African countries face on the political front, one of the reviewed authors was quoted as writing, “there is no magic recipe for turning countries around, only good cooks.”
The sharp application of the sentiment to the founding of companies was immediately and forcefully impressed upon me. There is no magic recipe for a successful company. There are only good cooks.
When I founded inmedia Public Relations at the height of the telecom boom in late 1998, I used to say our template client was “three engineers, a brilliant idea and $10 to $15-million in U.S. venture capital.” We were seeing these companies form at the rate of several a month, and I thought they were all going to succeed.
Boy, was I wrong.
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By Alexandra Reid
As a regular weekly feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are TechCrunch, Fast Company, Forbes, ReadWriteWeb and MarketingProfs.
Why startups should pay attention to skyrocketing patent prices
As large companies increasingly look to protect their revenue streams through IP risk mitigation, startups with strong patent holdings will become increasingly valuable because they provide an opportunity to remove dual potential threats to the potential acquirer’s revenue stream — as a competitor and as a patent threat. Author Leonid Kravets explains that startups that are able to position themselves as part of an acquirer’s IP risk-mitigation strategy make themselves more attractive targets for acquisition.
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By Leo Valiquette
Back in March I blogged about the striking similarities between an entrepreneur who is trying to bring technology to market and a writer who is attempting to publish a novel. I referenced the fact that I would soon be attending a literary conference, Ad Astra, as part of my business development and self-improvement efforts.
Ad Astra was in fact this past weekend and it is timely to write about the lessons learned from that experience in light of Alex’s post yesterday about the value of face-to-face contact in the age of social media.
Writers, like engineers, programmers and other creative types, often toil away in seclusion. We think we are staying in touch with the world, and the industries or markets in which we hope to sell our products, by using those ubiquitous social media tools. We can follow and contribute to Twitter streams, discussion threads, post comments on walls and read curated newsfeeds. But this is still akin to drifting over the landscape in a hot air balloon and shouting down at the masses below “how’s it going?” when what you really need to do is drop anchor and go see for yourself.
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By David French
“How can we find out whether we’re getting value for all the money we’re spending on patents within the company?”
This is a question I’ve heard before, and it’s a tough one to answer.
Corporations today are spending money on intellectual property. This includes not only patents but also trademarks and copyrights and occasionally industrial designs. All these items should be addressed in the modern high technology environmental. But a difficulty exists, particularly with respect to patents, in determining whether money invested in patents is money well spent.
There is a story going around that companies should have a large portfolio of patents in order to protect them in case they are sued by a competitor. The theory is that if you are sued then you will counter-sue, relying on one or more patents in the patent portfolio. But there is a fallacy involved in this scenario.
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March was an exciting month, full of changes and new developments.
In the commercialization ecosystem, all eyes were on the federal and Ontario budgets, which shook up government investment and spending in Canadian business and innovation. In social media, the Stop Kony 2012 campaign went viral, spurring fervent debates between its supporters and critics all around the globe. Facebook also unveiled its new brand pages, leaving many businesses scrambling to update their pages and understand the new format on deadline. We covered all of these subjects and more last month on this blog. If you missed any of our posts, here is a handy roundup.
March 22: What an IP co-ordinator should know, confidentially speaking By David French
March 14: Looking for that sweet spot to get market traction by Francis Moran & Leo Valiquette
March 01: Yikes … we forgot the demo! by Peter Hanschke
And on a related note…
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