توسعه سیستم ممیزی برای برتری مدیریت مالکیت معنوی

Intellectual property (IP) management has been widely accepted as an important topic to support the technological innovation. In order to effectively and efficiently implement IP management, it is more practical to firstly focus on the most important aspects which, in turn, provide immediate beneficial results to allow organizations to further implementing other aspects by allocating more resources. The authors propose an IP management excellence audit system that breaks down the complicated IP management practices into a list of enabling criteria and the IP management performance in various criteria can be measured in details. The enabling criteria are the critical success factors to good IP management system and practice. Analytic hierarchy process approach is used to determine the relative importance among the identified criteria in the IP management excellence audit system. The evidential reasoning approach is adopted to develop an expert assessment tool to carry out the audit of organizations’ performance in IP management. Based on the audit results, organizations will know the strength and weakness of their current IP management practice and can allocate resources and efforts in priority area for improvement. The authors have validated the developed system and tool in HK–Guangdong (HK–GD) based manufacturing organizations with satisfactory outcome. The audit results are helpful to provide top management facts and information to develop action plans for improving IP management. This paper presents the proposed IP audit system and the industrial case study with the development of an expert assessment tool.

With the globalization of the world economy and the flourishing joint venture activities among manufacturing organizations, intellectual property (IP) management becomes significantly important for business enhancement. Given the importance of IP, manufacturing organizations need to enhance the IP management capability in order to overcome challenges arising from the global competition and upgrade themselves from original equipment manufacturing (OEM) to original design manufacturing (ODM) and original brand manufacturing (OBM). Our research aims to develop an IP management excellence audit system for the following justifications: Firstly, resources are one of the limitations in implementation of IP management for manufacturing organizations. In order to effectively and efficiently implement IP management, it is more practical to firstly implement the most important factors which could provide immediate beneficial results to organizations. Then, organizations could evaluate the feasibility of further implementation of other factors by allocating more resources. The authors break down the complicated concept of IP management system and practices into a list of enabling criteria such that the IP management performance can be measured in details, in terms of enabling criteria. The enabling criteria are the critical success factors to good IP management systems and practices. It will help organizations easier to understand the IP management issues so that they could pay attention to these critical factors in order to improve their IP management performance. Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) approach is employed to identify the relative importance of each criterion in the IP management in a particular environment. Organizations can concentrate resources and efforts according to priority for implementing the criteria so that the IP management performance is improved to obtain maximized and immediate benefits. Secondly, organizations can employ the IP management excellence audit system as a tool to assess, measure and diagnose their IP management systems and practices. With the identified strengths, weakness and rooms for improvements, management could develop improvement strategies and action plans. Evidential reasoning (ER) approach is adopted to develop an assessment tool, a software tool to facilitate the audit of organizations’ performance in IP management. Through the establishment of effective IP management systems and practices, the organizations can align their IP portfolio with business objectives and eventually maximize the potential value from their IP assets. The developed audit system and assessment tool have been validated in a pilot study in Hong Kong–Guangdong (HK–GD) based manufacturing organizations with satisfactory outcome. It is noteworthy that the Guangdong manufacturing region, located in the Southern China, is named as the factory of the world because of its first-rank outputs in toys, electrical appliances, watches, etc. “Hong Kong–Guangdong (HK–GD) based manufacturing organizations” are Hong Kong-invested industrial organizations in the Guangdong Province of China, with manufacturing activities based in Hong Kong and Guangdong. The case study result indicates that the IP audit could provide organizations the strength, weakness and rooms for improvement in their current IP management systems and practices. The audit results are helpful to provide top management facts and information to develop action plans for improving IP management. It functions as the first step of a continuous approach to improve the IP management in organizations, which is a dominant factor for achieving the full potential and the competitiveness position of their business.

A review of this research provides a number of valuable findings and implications about IP management. First, by employing an AHP approach to identify the priority rankings of the four enabling categories and twelve key enabling criteria, 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; thus HK–GD based manufacturing organizations can utilize it 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. Secondly, the research results indicate that the HK–GD based manufacturing industry can employ the IP management excellence audit system 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 system 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 in the “results” section of the IP management excellence audit system. Finally, the IP management excellence audit system is validated by the audited HK–GD based manufacturing organizations through conducting case studies. The three improvement scenarios have illustrated the steps to implement the key IP management enabling criteria of the audit system and are found useful for organizations to plan their improvement strategies. Different improvement scenario results can be predicted without undergoing real implementation and changes. In this way, the audit system can be used as a strategic planning tool.