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Patents and IP management

This area of research focuses on strategies for exploiting innovation. There are different levels of analysis. Business models are a significant part of the innovation process. As technologies are transferred to the market, new appropriation strategies may have to be identified and company business models may therefore have to change.

A second focus of research is intellectual property management. Patents and intangible assets resulting from industrial R&D give leverage to companies and institutions for appropriating value and operating on technology markets.

Researchers are constantly looking for examples and new cases. PhD students and faculty are observing the behaviour of companies in order to collect relevant material for their studies.

Collaborations have been established with Harvard Business School, the University of California at Berkeley, and the European Patent Office. A new special issue on IP Management, edited by the faculty of the Institute, "New Practices and Business Models", will be published in 2012 by California Management Review.

The material collected by researchers will also be reviewed in a bi-weekly column for the newspaper "La Repubblica" (Affari & Finanza supplement); 20 pieces have been published so far.