As capstones to my reading, these two texts helped to frame some key concepts that would move my nonprofit intellectual property questions forward. I was out of my comfort zone with Lessig’s The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World and Landes and Posner’s The Economic Structure of Property Law. […]

A philosopher, a legal scholar, an economist, and a computer scientist walk into a bar… I don’t tell jokes because I can never remember the punchlines. Anyone who knows me well can attest. Academics in each of those disciplines edited a series of essays in one of the more unforgettable nonfiction books I’ve ever read. […]

I started my reading with Burning the Ships: Transforming Your Company’s Culture Through Intellectual Property Strategy. Marshall Phelps, also happened to be an alumnus of Muskingum University, where I was working at the time. It didn’t hurt to be able to say I’d read his book to my bosses. Frankly, the book was immensely insightful. […]

The librarians at Indiana University sent some content my way that highlighted what I had experienced working at the University of Pittsburgh. Institutions of higher education, particularly larger schools, have staff, policies, strategy, and resources specifically for the development, management, and transfer of innovation from the researcher(s) to industry. The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 transformed […]

In industry an entrepreneur is someone who innovates. In the nonprofit sector it’s no accident that certain nonprofit founders and some nonprofit organizations have been labeled social entrepreneurs or social enterprises. Though not everyone uses the terms social entrepreneur or social enterprise with innovation in mind, it technically indicates innovation in the social sector. If […]

It occurred to me that maybe I was looking for too narrow of an idea. If intellectual property is one output of innovation in industry maybe there were some hints in that literature. I went looking for starting points with the questions: I would have had an easier time drinking from a fire hose. There […]

How could I have worked for three organizations that made strategic use of their IP and no one researching the sector even mentions it? It seemed highly unlikely that I had happened to work at the only three nonprofits who were innovative enough to recognize their IP and they all happen to be in a […]

What is ironic and wonderful is that my misread led to interpreting a blog post as a call to give away intellectual property. That misunderstanding launched the pursuit of questions I still haven’t finished asking. My questions were sparked by the idea that giving impactful programs away is the best way to scale did not […]

Nonprofits were asked if employee of the organization hold the rights to any of the intellectual property in use by the organization. Eighteen (18) respondents replied that no individuals hold rights to the organization’s IP. Though one respondent did not answer this question, all nineteen (19) respondents answered the follow-up question of whether there is […]