One of these lies in the way the world manages the creation and ownership of inventions and ideas. A protectionist approach to intellectual property is designed to protect and prolong the lifecycle of existing technologies, and allow innovators to capture the profits from their creations. In a paper published with colleagues from universities in Germany and India, we examined how this also causes it to be tougher for new and much more sustainable technologies to be developed and adopted. That explains why nowadays there are other approaches being utilized to move key sectors to more sustainable systems and end this status quo.
Electric car manufacturer Tesla, has become doing that. Tesla CEO Elon Musk “shocked” the planet in 2014 as he announced that his company was joining the open source movement and handing out its patents for free. It is essential to understand the rationale here. Why would a company that had worked so hard to develop and protect its technology looking at the global car manufacturer competitors suddenly give its technology away at no cost?
Tesla initially developed Product Patent its technology. However, Tesla’s concern that it would be overwhelmed once established car makers ramped up their manufacture of electric cars never got to pass. Instead, it saw the electric car market stagnate at lower than 1% of total vehicle sales. So Tesla changed its strategy from trying to prevent others from building electric cars to seeking to encourage them in to the market.
Part of the reasoning here is when more electric cars are made, then more battery recharging stations will likely be built too. This could make electric cars become a little more visible, and a more conventional choice. Tesla believes an open intellectual property strategy can strengthen rather than diminish its position by building how big the electrical car market, and consequently, build its very own share in the total automotive market.
This kind of careful handling of intellectual property at company level, maintained by policy-level awareness, could be a powerful approach to support the same types of transitions to more sustainable technologies in other industries too.
Energy supply faces a range of difficulties: the depletion of natural resources; air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions; nuclear risks; and security of supply. The Inventhelp Store is restricted by water scarcity, pollutants, extreme environmental events such as flooding and expenses associated with supplying water to communities in poor countries and remote communities. The agri-food sector, meanwhile, is under pressure to sustainably produce more food as well as address malnutrition in poor countries.
For these industries to navigate a path around these complications, new knowledge as well as the innovations that follow is going to be essential. And then in knowledge economies, intellectual property may either be an enabler or an inhibitor.
In the event the ownership of intellectual property is fragmented inside an industry, it may slow down technology innovation and uptake, like inside the electronics industry where multiple players own complementary patents. However, firms can instead open up their innovation processes and move away from jealously guarded, internal cultures, where intellectual property can be used to protect and prolong lifecycles. This transformation may see knowledge sharing which leads to accelerated innovation cycles along with a wksgqs rapid uptake of sustainable alternatives within a sector: exactly what Tesla was dreaming about in electric vehicles.
This method to intellectual property, so-called “open IP”, is well advanced and mature inside the software industry and healthcare. It offers given access to life-saving medicines to thousands of people, specifically in Inventhelp George Foreman Commercial through patent pools, like the Medicine Patent Pool. This sort of project relies upon multinational pharmaceutical companies sharing their intellectual property, but small companies can also play a strategic roles in creating these new, more sustainable systems, and it’s not all about open IP.