The need to be competitive to survive and prosper in business is unrelenting. The pressure is continually on to be better than the competition. Everyone is hunting for growth and to create a better margin. Striving for proven additions to shareholder value.

Innovation often has a big part to play in this challenge. Innovation can be game changing ideas and developments or smaller smart steps all leading to better and more efficient processes, products, better customer services, and cost saving developments.

But if these innovations – your competitive edge – are not protected by intellectual property legal rights then they can be used by competitors free and without any of the investment risk. The exceptions will be those innovations which are based on know how that remains secret after the product or service has been made public such as by product promotion and sales.

If competitors can freely use your ideas then those innovations have no chance of giving an acceptable return on the risk capital invested in developing them or lead to higher margins or greater market share. The innovations will have been gifted to your rivals.

So innovation and Intellectual property if managed properly can produce added value to the business and better profits. It can give strategic advantage in two ways.

• First, by making a business able to beat the competition in the market or in financial performance or both.

• Secondly, by putting the competition at a strategic disadvantage as they have to find ways avoid the risk of substantial damages and legal costs by misusing (infringing) intellectual property or have to pay to use it through licensing.

It is important to remember that the cost of mistakenly infringing intellectual property is not just the compensation (damages) and legal costs but also all the money invested in bring the project to market such as development costs and production facilities.

This, of course, assumes intellectual property can make a difference in a particular business. So an important part of your strategy should be an objective assessment of the importance of intellectual property to your business.

Businesses and investors need to be sure that intellectual property protection is understood and is being taken seriously. It should be reported and considered at board level and should be key management responsibility.