Business Innovation and the Law: a new book

Business Innovation and the Law: Perspectives from Intellectual Property, Labour, Competition and Corporate Law, edited by Marilyn Pittard , Ann L. Monotti and John Duns (Faculty of Law, Monash University, Australia), is a curiously restless book. While the concept of business innovation is a fixed target, the authors of the various chapters approach it from a large number of different perspective: different academic disciplines, different jurisdictions -- even different periods in time.  If its function is to probe the complacent mind and force the reader to ask questions, it works well. However, this approach arguably makes it less able to answer the questions it asks, perhaps also because the laws are relatively easy to identify and explain but, in contrast, the reality of business innovation occurs in so many different industrial and commercial contexts.  There is also the danger of projecting the impact of the law, particularly case law, into business innovation. Much case law, especially at appellate level, is pathological, reflecting an individual conflict that requires judicial resolution, while similar conflicts are often resolved without recourse to the law because they are perceived as commercial issues rather than legal ones.

But what does the publisher say about this work?

"Business Innovation and the Law analyses the topical issue of protecting and promoting business research and development. It does so by examining business innovation through the lens of different legal disciplines – intellectual property, labour and employment laws, competition and corporate laws.

Evaluating the impact of each of these areas using discipline-specific and industry perspectives, the book also explores questions about whether a more harmonized approach is necessary to provide appropriate protection. Approaches of the common law and civil jurisdictions, particularly the European Union, inform and provide guidance to the analysis of emerging issues in this field. This book provides insights into various approaches taken by both common law and civil law jurisdictions regarding the increasingly blurred line of ownership rights in innovative industries. It traverses various disciplines of law as well as jurisdictions.

Using interdisciplinary perspectives to business innovation and inter-jurisdictional comparisons and analysis, this book will appeal to university administrators responsible for intellectual property policy, managers of technology transfer offices in universities, intellectual property lawyers, labour and employment lawyers and competition lawyers".

This seems on the whole an accurate and helpful description, and many of the chapters are very well equipped to deliver on the book's promise, being acknowledged experts in their fields. Sadly the book cannot remedy the obvious but inevitable fact that business innovation races ahead of both the law that governs it, the applications of economics that measure it and the principles of industrial relations that certainly used to govern it in the days of Big Employment -- and which in some sectors still do. Most of the law is designed for the days of one-inventor-one-invention-one-product, but look at the technology inside the hand-held device of your choice and you will see that this is now generally a myth.

Bibliographic data: published March 2013. xvi + 497 pages. Hardback ISBN 978 1 78100 161 5 ebook ISBN 978 1 78100 162 2. Hardback £100 (online from the publisher £90). Book's web page here.

Intangible Capital in print

A month ago, in "Reputations and Bottom Lines", I mentioned the publication of Mary Adams' and Michael Oleksak's new book Intangible Capital: Putting Knowledge to Work in the 21st-Century Organization. A copy of this little tome has now arrived in my letterbox and I've had a chance to leaf through it.

It's much more fun to read than the rather solemn title suggests, combining strands of history, economics, management, metaphor and common sense, personal experience and anecdote. It's also a monument to the metamorphosis of management and asset management philosophies from the age of bricks and mortar to the world of the internet. It won't provide the answers to all your questions (how many books of 150 pages do?) but it gets the reader into the mindset for asking the right questions. Since the right answers are (i) business-specific and (ii) change in time, while the right questions can be applied more generally and are less subject to the vicissitudes of commercial fashion, this is altogether a greater benefit to the reader.

Reputations and bottom lines: a new book

Intangible Capital: Putting Knowledge to Work in the 21st-Century Organization, by Mary Adams (right) and Michael Oleksak, has now been published and is available via Amazon at US$34.95. This is a project from I-Capital Advisors, which occupies a vocal corner of the IP finance world. According to the web-blurb:

"Today, 70% of corporate value is in intangibles. This is most clearly seen in mergers and acquisitions activity but is actually true for every company This value comes from knowledge that is developed by people and turbocharged by IT. But because our management systems and accounting are still based on industrial-era customs, this value remains invisible, misunderstood and unrecognized.

We have been successful in helping our clients use intangible capital tools to negotiate with merger partners, gain financing, improve performance and build the value of their companies. In early 2008, as we began writing about what we saw as the coming recession, we knew that it was time to take our IC message to a larger market. That fall, we sold our book concept to Praeger and during the dark days of the recession we worked on the manuscript, hoping to contribute to the recovery ...".

The book is described as "a practical handbook for every manager struggling to succeed and innovate in today's knowledge-based economy. It explains why intangibles are critical to performance, value and innovation. Why reputation is the new bottom line. And why intangible management skills and tools are critical to the future of your business".