So to summarize here, think about the following decision tree for innovation.
A series of questions you can ask yourself, and
then perhaps the recommended strategy for each of those.
So first we just simply wanna ask, is innovation important to our industry?
If the answer's no, then let's not worry to much about innovation.
I think we could argue in this day and
age that's a very rare occurrence where we're going to not worry about innovation.
So if we're worried about it we're in the yes column here,
ask yourself first do we have an innovative capability?
If the answer's no, then you might wanna think about a second mover strategy,
a fast follower strategy.
Maybe you acquire technology, maybe you imitate others.
Maybe you form partnerships and
collaborate in order to generate innovation.
But if the answer's yes and
you think you have a capability here and you can come up with some new ideas,
then you wanna ask the question about this intellectual property regime.
If it answer is it's not tight and it's hard to predict, then you might actually
wanna think about well maybe we should be doing an imitate strategy, or
second mover strategy.
But if you do think you can appropriate some of the value because the IP regime is
tight, then you gotta ask about the complimentary assets.
If you own and control those complimentary assets, or that they're not tight,
or not important, well then you go ahead an commercialize it yourself.
However, if there are some constraints here,
some bottlenecks you need to be concerned about, then you need to ask,
how widely available are these complimentary assets.
If they're not, think about licensing or contracts.
If they are, then once again you might commercialize, or use the market yourself.
So again I wouldn't suggest this is a hard and fast set of rules,
but it's at least a way to start thinking through these sets of questions about
appropriability and the ability to innovate.