Is Your IP at Risk?

Your IP is at risk if it is unprotected in any of the following ways:

• Vulnerable to loss or damage
• Loosely defined
• Informally shared
• Only in the minds of your workers

Here are some examples:

• We recently met with an international organization established over 100 years ago. Their organizational office has the only complete set of technical industry records in the world. Our first recommendation was to get a fireproof safe for the records. Next we suggested they get an electronic copy of them. (Vulnerable to loss or damage.)
• One client organization had been merged with another, which required the local operation to move to the East coast. Many of their local workers chose not to relocate. Before those workers left the organization, we went to work capturing their know-how—the processes and procedures that had never been written down. (Loosely defined and only in the minds of the workers.)
• A construction company had potential clients who only wanted to work with formally trained construction crews. The company's workers had always just learned on the job from one another. They hired us and we developed a comprehensive training and certification program, based on interviews we conducted with one of their experts, a former field supervisor. (Informally shared and only in the minds of the workers.)