Innovation Policy in Australia - Commercialising Inventions – What’s the Story?

The implementation of the venturousaustralian report would seem to be in full swing.

IPRIA also seems to be joining the debate through public forums in addition to its continued research into Intellectual Property. The forum: Commercialising Inventions – What’s the Story? on Tuesday 17 February 2009 in Brisbane and Thursday 19 February 2009 Melbourne, should provide fruitful discussion – see http://www.ipria.com/events/conf/expintform.cfm The forum is set to feature results from several national surveys of inventors, including a survey of 4000 Australian inventors. Such studies are similarly being examined abroad as noted in a previous post: http://www.iproo.net/2008/09/australias-national-innovation-review.html

The target audience includes senior business managers, IP lawyers, patent attorneys and policy analysts.

What will be of particular interest is how IP strategy plays into the discussion and whether the analysis will be purely examining the role of standard patents or a broader analysis of what role innovation patents, shape/sound and/or colour marks play in product designs for commercialization purposes. See http://duncanbucknell.com/blog/438/Trade-mark-marking-strategy---R-and-TM-disappearing and http://duncanbucknell.com/blog/366/Colour-branding-and-IP-Strategy regarding TM considerations.

Moreover, it will be interesting to hear discussion on any of the following:

• The importance of US commercialization efforts to inventors and the importance of VC funding in making an invention a genuine success.
• What role do consumer interests play in the innovation design processes and whether good scientific products fail because they fail to meet consumers’ needs.

As to the last of these points, I recently found the following illustrative of how good inventions need to be coupled with good education and awareness programs:

“In 2005, sales of CFLs accounted for less than 5 percent of the total lightbulb market. But only two years later, in 2007—the year that the public woke up to the looming threat of climate change—CFLs captured an estimated 20 percent of the lightbulb market, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Companies that sell CFLs, like General Electric Co. (GE), have increased their revenues, enhanced their brands, and strengthened their competitive positions in the market.
…
Toyota likewise had to tackle early perceptions that the Prius had less power than non-hybrid cars. Toyota did this by redesigning the Prius to meet performance and style preferences of consumers. The carmaker increased the horsepower and conducted a campaign promoting the vehicle as “quick, roomy, and economical.”

The article also plays strong emphasis on education (and when one thinks about it, this is a role where government and the private sector can work together):

“Because consumers are largely unaware of green alternatives, businesses first need to think of themselves as educators, not salespeople. And they must expand their lesson plans beyond their own products to the larger issues of pollution, climate change, overfishing, and other environmental problems.”

See Cultivating the Green Consumer by Sheila Bonini & Jeremy Oppenheim http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/cultivating_the_green_consumer/

These considerations, amongst others (if discussed at the IPRIA forum), should make the forum ‘a must’ for those interested in the innovation narrative. No doubt that narrative will be critical to the larger global economic picture for innovation and future patterns both here and abroad.