Book Launch – Innovation in Australia: what is the role of IP?

Yesterday was the launch of the book, titled: “Measured Success, Innovation Management in Australia.” The launch took place at Melbourne University’s law school and was the product of joint work between the Business School: http://www.mbe.edu/ and IPRIA: http://www.ipria.org/

The book provides a summary of Australian case studies as to how Australian companies (sometimes in collaboration with global players) have achieved varying success in dominating their “niche global market".

While I am only in the early chapters, I found the following passage of interest with respect to the Extended Wear Contact Lens Project at page 21:

“Adrian Hunter went beyond the usual practice of inviting patent attorneys to attend the first meeting of the project. He invited them to attend all of the quarterly meetings for the five-year duration of the project....

In addition to allowing the patent attorneys to think about their patent strategy very early on in the process, this experiment facilitated two fundamentally important information transfers of tacit knowledge, one from the patent attorneys to the scientists, and the other from the scientists to the patent attorneys...

The scientists started to understand, at a much deeper level, the notion of a patent as a strategic weapon...the patent attorneys learned what it was that the scientists had actually created...The consequences of these information transfers were quite dramatic...”

The book is providing a fascinating read and I recommend it to anyone who is engaged in the innovation debate that is the focus of national attention and where IP fits into the equation....See the following website for further updates on the debate and the expected Green Paper at the end of July: http://www.innovation.gov.au/innovationreview/Pages/home.aspx