Blog

February 3, 2012

What's Wrong with This Picture: Kodak's 30-year Slide into Bankruptcy

This good piece from Wharton re-emphasizes the core theme of the IP2Biz model: You can't manage disruptive innovation only from inside the company. Outside perspectives and partners are absolutely necessary. The processes and products we've developed over the last 7 years are proven to help our clients avoid Kodak's fate.

February 1, 2012

Disruptive Innovation is a challenge for all companies

The pace of development and dissemination of knowledge over the past three decades has surpassed by orders of magnitude all discoveries over preceding history. But our processes to harness that knowledge for profitable innovation by America's corporations have lagged far behind.

IP2Biz has spent the last six years working to understand the space between federally funded research and profitable commercial implementation. 90% of inventions from American research universities never make it to market. That large gap presents an unparalleled opportunity for early technologies. But most of the corporate world is avoiding or unable to exploit this potentially fertile ground. Why is that so, and why do we believe we have the experience to help companies succeed?

Our clients are corporations in America and around the world. Senior executives understand that constant innovation leads to higher shareholder value. But today's economic pressures and global uncertainties have reduced the appetite for discovery and risk taking. Experiments with formalized attempts to pursue "Open Innovation" have only built cost centers which have produced few results. There is a growing realization that "nascent projects" - bold new initiatives identified by C-level executives - must be freed up to receive funding and resources from the corporation. Barriers which impede this forward motion include time limitations, budget limitations, risk of unproven technologies, staff shortages and constantly intervening shorter-term priorities. From Christensen, we know that corporations are good at sustaining innovation (around which they are organized), but usually fail at disruptive innovation. Game-changing projects remain captured in the top desk drawer.

The highly evolved IP2Biz process changes that. We have the ability to release a flood of profitable innovation for companies of all sizes and across many industries.

November 1, 2011

IP2Biz Identifies, Prepares Leading Edge Technologies for Commercial Release

IP2Biz "discovery" and investment enables launch of wound care and 3-D solar cell market ready technologies

Atlanta (November 1, 2011) -- IP2Biz, an innovation capitalist company that discovers and invests in promising technologies to help advance products toward full-scale commercialization, has propelled two new technologies for market ready availability, the company announced today.

The first solution, Wound Zoom, is a hand-held digital camera system that captures an image of a wound and automatically provides critical dimensions without contact. Designed for use in hospitals, nursing homes and for home health professionals, Wound Zoom is a portable and easy-to-use solution that tracks the progression of wounds and, as a result, helps health care providers improve outcomes for elderly patients, diabetics and others suffering from wounds like bed sores and pressure ulcers. The technology also significantly lowers the cost of treatment.

Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) Professor Stephen Sprigle invented the Wound Zoom technology. After researching the market demand, IP2Biz identified likely industry buyers for the technology and then sponsored research with Prof. Sprigle and Georgia Tech. IP2Biz also secured all the rights to the invention for the purpose of selling the technology. IP2Biz invested in additional system design, packaging and testing and sold the solution to Colorado based start-up, Wound Zoom Inc.

"Due to an aging population, wound care costs in the U.S. alone, are expected to exceed $22 billion a year," said John Bacon, founder and chairman of IP2Biz. "We were excited from the onset to work with Professor Sprigle and help move this important innovation from the lab to the marketplace where it can reduce healthcare costs and improve patient outcomes."

As part of its technology scouting process, known as IPScout, IP2Biz also uncovered a ground-breaking three-dimensional solar cell technology that will be useful in a variety of applications ranging from powering satellites to cell phones.

Jud Ready, a research scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, outlined his idea for the technology as a way to increase power generated from traditional planar cells. IP2Biz funded additional research by Ready and also managed patent filings. Bloo Solar of California licensed the technology and recently raised its second round of capital with plans for producing the solar cells by 2013.

"Ninety percent of university research never sees the light of day," Bacon said. "We use our process to search for the ideas that are going to have long-term impact around the world and move them forward for our corporate clients like Bloo Solar and Wound Zoom Inc."

The improved efficiency of 3-D cells will benefit a variety of markets and industries, according to John Fisher, vice president of finance at Bloo Solar.

"The 3-D cell has unlimited potential and is more practical since more light gathering power is packed into a small footprint," Fisher said. "P2Biz has brought us an exciting and impactful technology that we look forward to bringing to market in the coming months."

Wound Zoom was launched at trade show this fall and the solution is already helping healthcare providers elevate patient outcomes.

"Healthcare professionals need and want better technology to help improve efficiencies and deliver better care to patients," said Thomas J. Whelan, president of Wound Zoom. "With the Wound Zoom, we are able to help our customers meet both of these critical objectives and we fully expect the solution to transform this growing sector in the healthcare industry that serves elderly and diabetic patients."

For more information on IP2Biz and its other successful examples of accelerating the commercialization of new technologies, visit www.ip2biz.com.

About IP2Biz

IP2Biz® turns promising technologies into profitable realities for corporations through a process that reduces risks, saves time and lowers costs.

Working with corporate clients through its IPScout^SM program, IP2Biz unearths promising IP, assesses its market potential, and validates the technology. IP2Biz then provides early stage investment capital and forms a proof-of-commercialization entity called a ProofCo® project-- to "prove and package" the technology for commercialization through the sale to corporations. With IP2Biz, corporations gain insider access to technologies with proven commercial viability. Researchers are recognized and rewarded without undergoing any of the traditional hassles of the IP-to-market process. And, University TTO offices welcome IP2Biz' early stage investment and expertise in securing corporate licensees.

September 19, 2011

IP2Biz Chairman John Bacon talks about the innovation logjam

Check out this short video of John Bacon, founder of IP2Biz, describing an innovation process that can kick start a company's product development. You can find John's full presentation at www.dabf.dk.

July 26, 2010

John Bacon, Chairman of IP2Biz LLC recently gave a TEDx talk, Dumpster Diving at American Universities at TEDx Creative Coast in Savannah, GA.

June 10, 2010

IP2Biz partners with Energy Launch

Imagine that you are the EVP Marketing of a Fortune 1000 company. You have a great concept, but with all of the other pressures you just can't seem to get traction. You need to know what leading edge technologies could make your concept into a reality and then to prove that technology could deliver a market winning product.

IP2Biz has an incredible reach back into our research universities, and with the IPScout process can uncover the best emerging technology option and secure it for commercial development. Investing capital alongside the client through the ProofCo process, IP2Biz moves that idea forward toward commercialization.

Energy Launch Partners will brings its strategic focus on clean tech to this partnership and will utilize IP2Biz's proven accelerator products to give its customers a strategic innovation advantage.