The Invisible Edge: Taking Your Strategy to the Next Level Using Intellectual Property

The average business book is really a business article, padded out to book length via stings of anecdotes and repetition of the obvious. Not in this case. Blaxill and Eckardt have a substantive case to make - namely, that in the search for sustainable competitive advantage, most managers are looking in the wrong place. According to the authors, conventional management efforts - focused as they are on operational efficiencies and "best practices" - are bound to fail, because in an era of hypercompetition, traditional advantages can't be defended for any length of time.

Instead, they argue, intellectual property is the only key to lasting advantage - and IP strategy should be the chief focus of senior management's attention. To delegate IP to specialists from the legal and engineering camps is to fail.

Blaxill and Exckardt support the argument with extensive, detailed examples of companies that got their IP right and those that didn't, as well as policy decisions that strengthened or weakened IP positions. In particular the story of Xerox - effectively stripped of its IP in the '70s in a misguided government effort to ensure competitiveness. Overseas competitors thrived on the IP they were able to access, and Xerox never recovered. It's a cautionary tale for 21st-Century patent policy. intellectual property

Blaxill and Eckardt are IP traditionalists - they favor strong protection. They're definitely not members of the Wickinomics/"information wants to be free" camps. There's a place for IP collaboration in their world, but it needs to be balanced against the recognition that too much sharing at the wrong time risks diluting a company's sole source of value. Not a fashionable viewpoint by any means, but one that needs and deserves to be heard.

For senior executives struggling to set strategic direction in challenging times... for policymakers who need to lay the foundations for a healthier, more competitive economy... and for investors who need a firmer basis than quarter-by-quarter financial performance to value their holdings... The Invisible Edge provides a worthwhile new lens. Recommended.

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