When it comes to reporting on innovation, USA Today Got It Wrong. In their piece, the most innovative companies are measured by counting total patents filed in a given year.
Innovation is more than simply filing patents. Anyone with financial means can file for a patent. Simply filing doesn’t equal something innovative or even something valuable.
Furthermore, if patent filings indicate innovation, then the greatest disruptors of late such as Airbnb and Uber are left – by definition- as non-innovative companies. Certainly that doesn’t seem right.
Patent portfolios fail to fully address the value that can be derived from a company’s full intangible asset portfolio and the company’s management of the portfolio. Innovation is a collection of various intangible assets, such as license rights, patents, trademarks, as well as the activities taken to effectively utilize these assets thus generating truly disruptive forces in technology, brands, software, etc.
ktMINE published research looking at patents as well as additional indicators of innovation.
See our thoughts here: http://www.iam-media.com/Magazine/Issue/61/Features/Drivers-of-IP-value-the-most-active-companies-in-intellectual-property
