Bernhard Smandek, Andreas Barthel, Jens Winkler and Peter Ulbig
There is a growing awareness of intellectual property (IP) rights in European public research institutes. Since 2008 a non‐binding recommendation of the European Commission has…
Abstract
Purpose
There is a growing awareness of intellectual property (IP) rights in European public research institutes. Since 2008 a non‐binding recommendation of the European Commission has been, in effect, proposing a consistent policy for IP in research and development (R&D). While there is a broad consensus on the overall goal – achieving a higher competitiveness of European industry in the international market place – there are, however, conflicting expectations on the micro‐management: are technology transfer agencies to be considered as profit‐centers, cost‐centers, mediators or all of the above? This paper seeks to provide an answer
Design/methodology/approach
The Physikalisch‐Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) is the national metrology institute of Germany with 1,900 employees and an annual budget of €145 million. It has established a micro‐management policy for IP rights, which is successfully fostering the development of modern instrumentation for metrology and may serve as an example for other public institutions as well. While it is obliged by law to operate as a regular market participant when licensing patents, there are additional conditions, some with the status of a law or a binding government decision as well.
Findings
The BSC approach, implemented at PTB, provides guidelines to reconcile seemingly conflicting requirements for a public entity while at the same time generating economic benefits in terms of additional income from licensing. In the authors' opinion this approach keeps costs at a reasonable level, fosters inventors' motivation and furnishes data for decisions for the technology transfer office as well as for the leadership of the institution.
Originality/value
To manage this conflict of goals the authors developed and implemented a balanced score card (BSC) system for IP management in order to optimize licensing income generation, cut costs, keep the inventor's motivation high and simultaneously realize macro‐economic technology transfer tasks. The BSC was originally introduced for the private sector by Norton and Kaplan in 1992, in response to a failure of purely monitoring financial indicators. The balanced score card considers economic and non‐economic factors, often denoted as “soft”. It is balanced with respect to result‐oriented indicators, like licensing income, and with respect to process‐oriented indicators, like the acceptance rate of inventions for patenting. And it tries to deduce from a trend of an indicator in the past a prediction of future development, associated with recommendations for actions to influence the ongoing process. The paper discusses the issues.
Details
Keywords
Daniela Carlucci and Antonio Lerro
Organizations are increasingly aware that to face complexity and uncertainty in today's business landscape, it is important to properly exploit, combine, and continuously develop…
Abstract
Purpose
Organizations are increasingly aware that to face complexity and uncertainty in today's business landscape, it is important to properly exploit, combine, and continuously develop their intellectual capital (IC). In this introduction to the special issue the aim is to develop some theoretical and managerial reasons explaining the importance of IC to achieve business excellence; then, to call for renewed analysis in the IC research stream aimed to investigate what are the new key intellectual capital dimensions and traits to be better developed and managed in order to deal with the fluidity of business, uncertainty, crisis, change, turbulence and high competitive pressure.
Design/methodology/approach
The approaches, evidences and insights discussed in this introduction are largely based on the discussion of the topics of the conference “International forum on knowledge assets dynamics” organized in June 2010 in Matera, Italy. At this conference, leading experts discussed the importance of intellectual capital for organizational business excellence in the twenty‐first century, the new IC key‐value drivers to manage in order to face emergent competitive scenarios, and research and management practices for addressing complexity, uncertainty and changes of today's business landscape.
Findings
The outcomes of this introduction and the contributions to the special issue reflect the emerging discussion about the role of IC management constructs. This discussion is largely focused on the importance of translating IC management within organizational components for achieving business excellence, highlighting approaches and tools in different contexts of analysis.
Originality/value
This introduction as well as all the contributions to the special issue deal with different aspects, which are important in the discussion of the role played by IC in achieving organizational business excellence as well as the approaches, tools, methods and techniques to better disentangle the mechanisms by which IC dimensions, separately or interdependently, contribute to improve companies' organizational performance.