When one’s business strategy depends upon innovation simply happening—and happening in a way that ensures proper and deliberate consideration and thoughtful implementation by the business itself—the opportunities for failure, misallocation of resources, and missed opportunities are considerable.
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has been working on standards that delineate various processes and practices that aim to keep one’s innovation activities on a useful and beneficial track. As stated by Clare Naden on behalf of ISO, “[I]ntellectual property (IP) is important for any kind of organization as it allows it to ‘own’ and therefore protect its ideas. IP can be leveraged to achieve many business objectives such as attracting and securing investment, increasing competitive advantage and more.”
Previously released innovation standards include these:
- ISO 56000, Innovation management – Fundamentals and vocabulary: These standards address the fundamentals of innovation management and the attending vocabulary.
- ISO 56002, Innovation management – Innovation management system: These standards provide a strong, detailed overview of an overall system to manage innovation, from beginning to end.
- ISO 56003, Innovation management – Tools and methods for innovation partnership: These standards identify and explore the various whys and how’s of partnering with others in the innovation space.
Additional international standards for innovation management were recently announced by ISO, as follows:
- ISO 56005, Innovation management – Tools and methods for intellectual property management
- ISO 56005, the recently added standard in this series, provides specific guidelines and strategies to help organizations protect and maximize their best ideas. In many ways, and for many readers, this is the standard that really gets to the meat of the matter by specifically addressing the creation of an intellectual property strategy to support innovation in an organization, establishing systematic IP management within the innovation processes, and applying consistent IP tools and methods in support of efficient IP management.
If you have questions regarding these updates, please contact Fitch Even partner Steven G. Parmelee, author of this alert. NOTE: Steve is a founding member of the International Association of Innovation Professionals (IAOIP), which serves as a part of the global group that is setting the standards for ISO 56000 and which provides innovation training and corresponding certification.
Fitch Even IP Alert®