Over the last decades the management of intellectual property (IP) has received increasing attention. With the shift from an industrial economy to knowledge and intellectual asset economies, the unbelievable speed of software development the allocation of ownership rights for intellectual property, but also the management of usage rights (licensing) is critical for firms across industries.

Particularly, in open innovation projects IP and patents in particular are perceived to be more important than in closed innovation processes. IP is often crucial for firms and other organizations, such as universities, to ensure they can maximize value capture, while actually sharing their IP. We are interested in appropriation strategies for value maximization, but also the motives behind open IP strategies (e.g. patent pledges) for accelerating technology diffusion for setting defacto or formal standards.

In our research we are interested in all strategic aspects of IP management within innovation processes, particularly in distribute and open innovation ecosystems with emphasis on emerging technologies which potentially can disrupt existing path dependencies. We are very much interested to work with sustainable technologies that contribute to accelerating economic and societal transitions to society. We are also interested in IP aspects of product-service systems (e.g. business models where product ownership is not transferred to the user, but remains with the manufacturing company). These business models have been shown to be of particular relevance for sustainability transitions and the circular economy.

Given that not many successfully proven IP management tools exist, as part of our research we aim to contribute to the development of better tools for strategic decision making around IP related aspects in the innovation process. For instance, we are interested in IP roadmapping, but also portfolio management and licensing models.