The final project report is available for download here: Building stronger intellectual property strategy capabilities - Supporting SMEs to succeed with open innovation
The European Union (EU) has been promoting Open Innovation collaboration models as part of its digital single market and innovation policies. Open Innovation enables inter alia faster innovation cycles.
The POINT project (Project on Open Innovation and Intellectual Property) has been comissioned by EASME (EASME/2019/OP/OO17) to provide an empirical basis for existing collaboration models based on Open Innovation and the extent to which intellectual property (IP), including patents, utility models, designs, trade secrets and know-how, facilitates or hinders Open Innovation.
Project description
POINT consists of 8 work items, over four main tasks: Planning, Data collection, Analysis and Policy Recommendations. Commencing in May 2020 POINT aims to engage with SMEs, HEIs and PROs across Europe in order to collect evidence through interviews.
Organisations will be selected based on pre-determined criteria, and from within six value chains from:
- Microelectronics
- Internet of Things (IoT)
- Connected, clean and autonomous vehicles
- Food and FMCG
- Smart health
- Cybersecurity
How to get involved
If your company is an SME active in any of the above value chains and based anywhere in Europe, please consider signing up by completing this short form if you would like to participate in the project by completing a short interview.
To understand how we will use your data, please read the project's privacy statement.
Project objectives:
- to identify and describe categories of Open Innovation (‘OI’) processes
- to identify and describe the typical IP issues/arrangements/implications occurring in OI processes
- to identify ways in which IP should be managed to facilitate the implementation of certain OI processes as well as their potential impact on the profitability of individual stakeholders involved
- to detect possible problems relating to the use of IP in an Open Innovation context, and identify ways to overcome them
- to analyse the participation of SMEs, Higher education institutes (HEIs) performing research and other public research organisations (PROs) in Open Innovation collaborations and identify the opportunities and challenges facing SMEs, in particular with regard to their IP strategy
Outcomes
The project timeline includes two workshop events that will seek to bring together experts from Open Innovation, Intellectual Property and Policy development. With an interim workshop in December 2020, and final workshop in April 2021, POINT aims to establish the driving factors and uses of OI collaborations and determine which IP factors promote or hamper the entry of the resulting product/services on the market.
About EASME
The EASME - Executive Agency for SMEs vision: 'We aim to help create a more competitive and resource-efficient European economy based on knowledge and innovation'
Contact information of POINT core team:
Graham Bell (Project Lead) - IfM ECS Industrial Associate
Dr Frank Tietze - Head, Innovation and IP Management (IIPM) Lab
Dr Pratheeba Vimalnath - Research Associate, Innovation and IP Management (IIPM) Lab
Dr Diana Khripko - IfM ECS