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Australia lags behind in innovation: NMW presentation

"Australia punches well below its weight when it comes to all facets of innovation," Lachlan Mullane of Hodgkinson McInnes said at National Manufacturing Week earlier this week.

According to the World Economic Forum of Global Competitiveness report, Australia is ranked at 23 out of 148 for its capacity for innovation – and Mullane thinks we can do better.

"I think it's important to supplement learned innovation with genuine pioneering innovation that can add value to Australian manufacturing businesses," Mullane said.

He added that the most obvious way for Australian manufacturers to capitalise on investment in innovation is through utilisation of intellectual property (IP) assets.

For a manufacturing business, this can help:

  • Increase sales or market share
  • Maximise the value of your business
  • Boost the value and saleability of your commercial interests
  • Minimise risk and maximise your peace of mind

"Innovation assets are a tool that is there to be utilised by your business. Like any other tools that are available, it's something that you should keep in your arsenal and utilise to the maximum capacity to effectively increase the value of your business," Mullane said.

IP property rights act to protect the function and appearance of products and brand assets. Importantly, IP assets can be obtained for what simply is good innovation, or what is often seen as just good engineering factors.

"Don't be too dismissive of things you might see as simply good business practice, there are ways to protect that and increase the value of your business…there are ways you can be smart about building in functional components that also have the element of distinctiveness that can give you a market advantage," Mullane said.

IP rights can protect many aspects of a product or process, including the function, the appearance of products and brand assets. They include patents, which is the exclusive right to commercialisation of an invention, registered designs, which are an exclusive right over a particular appearance of a product, and trademarks, which is anything that can be distinctive of a business.

Australia is in a good position to capitalise on IP intelligence, as most IP assets that get files are in the US or Europe, so there's often a lot of technology available that can be freely utilised in Australia.

"There's a wealth of information out there about new technologies that there's no reason why you can't simply pick that up and bring it into Australia without any need to pay anyone for it or any need to be concerned about possible infringement issues," Mullane said.

Another thing to consider is using the patent system as a means of monitoring the competition. "Patent documents will often get published well in advance of product launches so you can keep an eye on what your competitors are up to in a form of commercial intelligence. You can predict when new products hit the market and what kinds of featured those products may have," Mullane said.

IP intelligence can help build technical knowledge and highlight commercial opportunities. It can be a way of discovering if an area has white space, where you can potentially move into an area where no one is working in already, or is crowded with patents, which indicates a lot of competition.

"Like it or leave it, IP assets are there to be exploited, and if you're not doing it, your competitor probably is. Keep the playing field as uneven as possible by being strategically sensible about what you do with an innovation strategy. Take advantage of being able to be a bit smarter than what your competitors are doing. If you don't do it, they probably will and you'll find yourself at the wrong end of that slope," Mullane said.

For more information on intellectual property, click here.

 

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