Innovation Mapping: a Powerful Tool in Business Decision-Making

ATTENTION : Cette activité se déroulera en FRANÇAIS / This activity will be conducted in FRENCH.

As is the case in many sectors, the amount of available intellectual property data is growing, and access to this data is becoming more and more widespread. This reality is bittersweet, to say the least. Despite the fact that it’s now possible to access a large volume of data quickly and easily, the challenges associated with assessing the relevance of this data and processing it remain unresolved.

Regardless of their field of activity, all innovative companies should have an intimate knowledge of the world in which they operate; otherwise, they run the risk of making business decisions that are neither in line with their own business objectives, nor consistent with third parties working in the same field. This is why it’s important to develop and cultivate a genuine curiosity in what other players – partners and competitors alike – are up to, as well as an understanding of their intellectual property.

Following a brief overview of the mechanisms related to the protection of intellectual property, we will look at the issues that need to be addressed when developing an innovation map, or landscape, for a sector of activity.

From a practical standpoint, innovation mapping can take many forms; it all depends on the questions that need answering. For example, you might want to get a better understanding of a particular third party’s patent, industrial design and trademark portfolio; identify the geographic strategy of a certain competitor; pinpoint the arrival of new players or the disappearance of others in a given environment; better understand the relationship between players in a particular industry; or identify licensing opportunities. These are just a few of the questions that can be answered using innovation mapping.

At its core, innovation mapping aims to support your business decisions, as well as fuel reflections on your business strategy, specifically your intellectual property protection strategy. In this training session, Dominique Pomerleau and Frédéric Venne will present theoretical considerations related to the development of an innovation map in a sector of activity, as well as provide practical examples.