Imagine If: There is No Higher Ground

In this episode of RallyCast, hosts John Paul Keeler and Carl Osterlof engage with Bo Heiden, Director at the Center for Intellectual Property (CIP), to explore the multifaceted world of intellectual property and its critical role in the knowledge economy. The conversation delves into why businesses need to view IP as a profit center rather than a cost center, the challenges of bridging the gap between IP and business understanding, and the implications of AI on the future of IP management.

Bo brings a unique perspective to the conversation, having spent decades studying how knowledge can be transformed into economic and societal value. He introduces a deceptively simple but critical question for organizations: why do they make the IP decisions they do? To illustrate, he imagines a "why campaign," with the CEO metaphorically sitting on every IP professional’s shoulder, asking why each decision is made and how it contributes to measurable value.

Also in this episode

• Why the "tyranny of efficiency" blinds companies to whether their IP work creates actual value 
• How treating IP as a profit center instead of a cost center would force the conversations companies avoid 
• Why patent analytics is like satellite reconnaissance, and why many generals are refusing to look at the photos 
• What happens when machines can file patents, check validity, and eventually do the inventing too

We don’t want to automate for automation’s sake. Now is a good time to lift your head, see the forest for the trees, and ask yourself: why do we do what we do?

About Bo Heiden
Bo Heiden is the Co-Director of the Center for Intellectual Property (CIP) at the University of Gothenburg, a joint platform bridging academia and industry to transform knowledge into wealth and societal value. He also serves as Executive Director of the Tusher Strategic Initiative for Technology Leadership at UC Berkeley and co-chairs the Technology, Innovation, and Intellectual Property program at the Classical Liberal Institute at NYU School of Law. He is also a member of the European Commission Expert Group on Standard Essential Patents.