An audit model for intellectual property management excellence

Abstract

The aim of this research is to study the critical success factors for implementing IP management related activities in organizations. These factors encompass the essential elements of an IP management excellence audit model that is used to assess the position of the organizations for achieving IP management improvements. The initiative under this project encourages the organizations to use the audit model for conducting assessment programmes in order to give the organizations a head start in their paths to IP management excellence. In order to accomplish the aim, four specific objectives to be achieved under the aim of this project are set: first, “Develop an IP management model”; second, “Investigate the IP management practices of HK-GD based manufacturing industry”; third, “Prioritize the relative importance of enabling categories and criteria in IP management for HK-GD based manufacturing industry”, and lastly, “Develop and implement an IP management excellence audit model that is suggested for the HK-GD based manufacturing industry”. The project attempts to make contributions in both theoretical and practical areas to introduce an IP management excellence audit model which is an important part of the business process in the current environment. At the theoretical level, the scope of project focuses on theoretical justification and theory development of a set of key enabling criteria for an IP management excellence audit model. At the practical level, the scope covers implementation of the IP management excellence audit model with the HK-GD based manufacturing organizations being used to test the theory. The research has provided a number of valuable findings and implications about IP management. First, the research identifies five core values in IP management and four enabling categories with twelve key enabling criteria and then develops a criteriabased IP management model through literature review. Based on this review of literature, a questionnaire survey is conducted in the HK-GD based manufacturing industry and the extent of implementation of the four enabling categories with twelve key enabling criteria is examined. Second, the results indicate that the general IP management practices (extent of implementation of IP management enabling categories and key enabling criteria) in the HK-GD based manufacturing industry are lagging far behind in some key enabling criteria. This implies that there is a lot of room for the HK-GD based manufacturing industry to improve by allocating more resources to the twelve key enabling criteria. Third, the relationships of the extent of implementation of twelve key enabling criteria are examined to be positively related to the IP management excellence; moreover, four enabling categories contribute to IP management result categories, thus providing industrial practitioners with implications to improve IP management. Fourth, an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) study based on expert interviews is conducted to prioritize the relative importance of the four enabling categories and twelve key enabling criteria. This provides HK-GD based manufacturing organizations with priority rankings of these enabling categories and key enabling criteria; and can be utilized by them as a step-by-step approach to improve their IP management, which is the dominant factor for achieving the full potential and the competitiveness position of their business. By employing the findings and results from the AHP study, the HK-GD based manufacturing organizations can allocate resources and efforts in enabling categories or key enabling criteria in priority for implementation so as to obtain immediate changes. Fifth, the research results indicate that the HK-GD based manufacturing industry can employ the IP management excellence audit model as a tool to assess, measure and diagnose its IP management and for management to develop an improvement action plan and strategy. By interpreting the results, HK-GD based manufacturing organizations can use the audit model as a tool and guideline to formulate appropriate strategies to improve themselves in IP management which, in turn, achieve the result categories and performance dimensions that has been employed in the “Results” section of the IP management excellence audit model. Finally, through conducting case studies, the IP management excellence audit model is validated by the audited HK-GD based manufacturing organizations that have participated in the assessment of the enabling categories and key enabling criteria. This research presents significant contributions to the development of an audit model for IP management excellence. In the theoretical areas, the results of the research have integrated most enabling criteria from different researchers and literature review in IP management, including the support that is found in the studies of good systems and practices of organizations. The empirical research fills up the blank spot in the current literature. In practical areas, three case studies were used in this research for model testing of a rapid audit system and one case study was used for model testing of a comprehensive audit system. From the evidential reasoning analysis and comparison with external assessors’ results, it was found that the new IP management excellence audit model has the potential to improve the accuracy of the measurement system for a local Award and compensate for the lack of experience in assessment. Furthermore, different improvement scenario results can be predicted without undergoing real implementation and changes. In this way, the audit model can be used as a strategic planning tool. In addition, the model places emphasis on system works and general practices, called the enabling criteria, which provide organizations with guidelines so as to operate IP management strategy, policies, systems and practices to achieve IP management excellence. The model provides implications on how do organizations learn to adjust from product-oriented decisions and management practices to those that can accommodate the intangibles such as IP. It also provides the organizations necessary supports to upgrade their operation mode from original equipment manufacturing (OEM) to original design manufacturing (ODM) and original brand manufacturing (OBM).

Date of Award	2 Oct 2009
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Kwai Sang CHIN (Supervisor)