I enjoyed this post over on the HBR Blogs that said you should “stop obsessing over intellectual property rights” because what inevitably happens when companies obsess over IP rights is patent frenzy, and that just results in patent pirates plundering. And if that isn’t bad enough, since the full text of your patent is only a click away on the USPTO site, your secret sauce can easily be copied by any set of eyes with interest, and if their country isn’t very protective of IP rights, and they don’t try to sell into your home country, they can profit off of your IP royalty free and you have no recourse.

That’s one reason I’m not a big fan of patents in general, and think that North America should follow the EU and ban software patents specifically. There’s not much value in patenting “processes” that have existed since the dawn of civilization (and we have records of “auctions” going back thousands of years) as the patent can be easily knocked down, and there’s no value patenting a technology “invention” that is based almost entirely on open source, as a simple substitution of a few pieces, a few changes to the integration strategy, and a few new steps makes it a different invention — which means that someone else can use your publicly available blueprint to create their own “invention” with very little effort. Plus, the process is very time consuming and expensive in terms of dollars (as patent lawyers aren’t cheap) and time (as the documentation and questions from the lawyers and USPTO will take up a lot of time). And you can’t defend them unless you’re cash-rich, making them weak defenses if you’re cash poor.

I’m not saying IP isn’t important, it is, and, fortunately, it is protected under copyright law and other laws if you keep it trade secret. I’m just saying that IP isn’t everything. As the post points out, it’s what you do with the IP that matters. And effective use requires effective knowledge management. As the post points out, pursuing IPR (IP Rights) entails structuring and documenting knowledge, and the irony is that this very structuring allows diffusion to other firms who get access to it and either work around the IPR or eventually imitate it — so if you don’t effectively manage your knowledge, you lose it, or at least the benefits of it.

However, since a powerful strategic opportunity lies in binding your tacit knowledge assets to your structured knowledge, proper knowledge management can lead to significant market advantages and revenues, and make you a thought leader, like it did for Adobe, McKinsey, and Bloomberg.

So how do you create a knowledge management strategy? The authors suggest that you start by mapping your knowledge assets against a codification/diffusion grid that separates them into core compentencies, patents & copyrights, industry wide principles, and industry conventional wisdom, using the process described in this post on “are you wasting money”. Each type of asset requires a different strategy where protection and revenue generation are concerned.

In the end, legally owning your knowledge pays off only if you’re cash-rich enough to monitor and enforce the IPR. For most organizations, what ultimately drives performance is the organization’s possession of deep, tacit knowledge and its ability to identify, construct, and exploit knowledge networks using that knowledge to generate continual revenue streams.

In Part I we began our discussion and review of Minitrends: How Innovators & Entrepreneurs Discover & Profit from Business & Technology Trends, including the seven strategies that can also be used to spot minitrends, because minitrends, which are often the leading indicators of emerging megatrends, can be very vaulable to their discoverer in the short term and, sometimes, provide the foundations for new billion dollar enterprises. In Part II, we continued our discussion of minitrends by identifying useful sources of information that you can use to begin your search for minitrends and presented three types of minitrends that are emerging now.

Today, in this third and final part, we will discuss how you select a minitrend for exploitation, develop a minitrend exploitation scheme, and put the scheme into action. Because, to profit from a minitrend, you must determine the ones that are most attractive, develop a plan for taking full advantage of them, and execute that plan effectively.

In order to select a minitrend for exploitation, you must examine the attractiveness of the minitrend to the business community and to you personally. The best minitrend will be one that is very attractive to both the business community, whom you need to buy the product or service you eventually offer, and to you, as a lot of work will be required before you recognize your first sale of a new product or service.

In order to determine the attractiveness of a minitrend to the business community, you must:

• define the exact nature of the minitrend
  as you need to be able to define an appropriate product or service
• define the special attractiveness of the minitrend
  as you need to define what will make the market want to buy
• analyze the size and nature of potential markets
  as the market must be big enough to create a sustainable business in
  the short term
• consider where the minitrend is in the emergence process
  as you cannot be too early or too late to market
• examine the potential implications of external factors
  so that you can identify a shift before it is too late

Once you have identified the minitrends attractive to the market, you must then identify the minitrends attractive to you (or to your company). This will depend on your own enthusiasm, interest, and capability, and may require a bit of soul searching if multiple minitrends look equally attractive.

Once you have selected a minitrend for exploitation, the next thing you need to do is create a plan to exploit it. The process you start with is similar to the process of creating a business plan, which usually goes something like:

• define your current situation
• decide where you want to be at some future time
• determine how you are going to get from the current situation to some future situation

but the difference is that you are not necessarily going after an established market, but an emerging market being established by a minitrend that is still taking shape. As a result, you need to build your exploitation scheme to account for a number of different scenarios. There is the base scenario, the target scenario, and a number of plausible divergent scenarios that would require you to take significantly different actions in the development of an attractive product or service.

Once the most likely scenarios have been identified, the necessary tasks for achieving success are identified, along with the individuals who will need to perform the tasks, you need to (re) define the success characteristics and keep an eye on the market. If the minitrend manifests in a way that does not match the base scenario, but matches one of the divergent scenarios, you need to alter your exploitation plans. And if the minitrend diverges in a way that does not match any of your scenarios, you need to figure out if the new scenario is one that you can effectively serve or if you have to abandon the minitrend in favor of your runner up.

You also need to identify the expected changes to the minitrend after you launch your product or service, and be sure that your plan changes accordingly. Then, when you are ready, you have to launch your product or service, convince potential customers of the value of the minitrend and your manner of addressing it, look for opportunities to take advantage of convergences, and engage your supporters. If you stay flexible, stay healthy, and remember that there are other smart people in the world, and take advantage of their knowledge, chances are that you will succeed.

So what do I think of Minitrends: How Innovators & Entrepreneurs Discover & Profit from Business & Technology Trends by John H. Vanston and Carrie Vanston? I think it’s a good book that’s definitely worth reading by anyone who wants to understand where things are going and what they have to do to get there. While it doesn’t spell out definitive actions that you can take to improve your Supply Chain, IT Department, or Strategic Planning Division, it does introduce you to a mindset that will help you unleash your creativity and perceptiveness, which will help you spot more trends and make better decisions down the road. And that alone makes the book worth it.

In Part I we began our discussion and review of Minitrends: How Innovators & Entrepreneurs Discover & Profit from Business & Technology Trends because minitrends, which are often the leading indicators of emerging megatrends, can be very vaulable to their discoverer in the short term and, sometimes, provide the foundations for new billion dollar enterprises. Starting by noting that a minitrend is an emerging trend that promises to become significantly important in the next two to five years but which is not widely recognized or appreciated, we noted that minitrends are doubly important because failure to recognize them could also lead to the downfall of a billion dollar organization.

We then indicated that a mini-trend can often be identified by applying a mix of the following seven strategies:

• Follow the Money
• Follow the Leaders
• Examine Limits
• Consider Human Nature
• Watch the Demographics
• Analyze Frustrations
• Search for Convergence

So where do you begin your search? According to the authors, you:

• Utilize Public Sources
  start with printed material including books, periodicals, and newspapers and use editorial assists to scan for the most relevant sources
• Utilize Electronic Sources
  as more and more print goes online and more and more electronic search tools become available
• Engage Key Associations
  and the membership that might have insights into emerging trends
• Establish Social Networks
  both physical and virtual to get exposed to a wide range of ideas and opinions
• Identify Experts
  and engage with them in thought-provoking and informative manners
• Examine Patents and Patent Applications
  especially recent patents and applications
• Review PhD publications
  from top schools and labs in particular
• Pay Heed to Television
  and the educational and technology oriented networks like the Discovery Channel, History Channel, Science Channel, National Geographic Channel, and the Smithsonian Channel in particular
• Examine the Platforms of Losing Presidential Candidates
  often ahead of their time, they often come back with a life of their own in the near to mid term

The right mix of printed sources, electronic sources, assocations, social networks, experts, patents, and tv documentaries will often yield a multitude of potential minitrends to the emerging eye. So how do you know when you have a good one? Based on my review of the nine minitrends presented in the book, a good trend will be easy to understand, improve upon a current situation or offering, and present a viable business opportunity. The following examples exemplify this:

Example 1: Support for People Working at Home

Given that as much as 25% of white collar work is now being done in private residences by people who take advantage of flex time, telecommuting, and self employment opportunities, this is a valuable minitrend for anyone who can help overcome the (perceived disadvantages), such as the loss of nearby coworkers to bounce ideas off of, the lack of (high-end) office facilities and equipment, and administrative support. This is why we’ve seen a rise in business hotspots such as Starbucks, Hubs, and rooms you can rent by the day or hour; e-fax capabilities and business centers at office supply stores; and virtual receptionists / virtual office locations.

This trend is easy to understand, associated offerings improve upon a current situation in one or more ways, and the offerings present a viable business opportunity as many self-employed individuals or virtual small companies will take advantage of services designed to help them succeed.

Example 2: Evolution of Meaningful Maturity

For a variety of reasons, be it financial situation, desire for daily human contact, a continued ambition to do something useful, or an inability to just sit still, the aging populace is staying in the workplace longer, but not always in a traditional full-time 9 to 5 role. Also, many enterprises are starting to recognize the importance of the wisdom in their aging workforce and the need to explicitly capture the implicit knowledge in their heads. Furthermore, appropriate mind training can often enhance the mental actuity of the aging workforce and add years to their employment effectiveness. Thus, any advance that will improve knowledge capture, increase the useful life span of the aging workforce, or enable flexible work arrangements will have value and sustain the minitrend.

This trend is also easy to understand, dictates the need for services that improve the well being of the people involved as well as the organizations, and offers a number of viable business models that small businesses can adopt to be successful in one or more markets.

Example 3: Advances in Digital Manufacturing

Accompanying the improvements in thermoplastics, ceramics, semiconductors, and pharmaceuticals that we take for granted on a daily basis are improvements in the underlying manufacturing technology including stereolithography, selective laser sintering, shape deposition manufacturing, 3D printing, bioplotting, and layer object modelling that, combined, define an overall trend of continuing advances in digital manufacturing.

While the technical specifics may be beyond the average person, when one looks at the continued advances in consumer devices and pharmaceuticals, one can understand that there must be a corresponding advance in manufacturing techniques, even though one may not know what it is. In addition, one can see that any organization that can create a better manufacturing technology or process can advance the mini-trend and create a viable business selling the advancement to large corporations that rely on such technology. Thus, this is also a good minitrend to take advantage of if you are able.

So, now that you know how to find minitrends and identify good ones, how do you select one for exploitation, develop an exploitation strategy, put it into action, and capitalize on it? That’s the subject of the third and final post in this mini-series reviewing Minitrends: How Innovators & Entrepreneurs Discover & Profit from Business & Technology Trends.