I was a fundraiser for 15 years. The implications of my survey’s findings on who funds, owns, and benefits from intellectual property created by nonprofits was always lingering in the back of my mind. Fundraising is not a new activity or new profession. I remember one of my grad school professors showing us a direct […]

After the analysis of the survey responses was complete, I found myself in a similar state of curiosity that I’d been in before the survey. There were more questions about intellectual property, management, and strategy that hadn’t been answered. Some of these questions for the basis of my ongoing study and work as a consultant. […]

My pre-survey reading also highlighted the less obvious marketplace opportunity of recruiting and retaining people talent (Bingham and Spradlin, 2011). Showcasing intellectual capital assets to prospective board members and employees is a way to demonstrate expertise and strong operational skills. For recruiting board members, it’s a way to differentiate a nonprofit from others in the […]

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. […]

I really had no idea what reading about open innovation might be about, other than I thought it was loosely connected to the ideas of open source. Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm was as eye-opening about the mechanisms for innovation as Intellectual Property and Theories of Justice was thought-provoking. The concept of open innovation […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]