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Legal Blockages were cited as the number one obstacle to innovation in our study.
Old school thinking about protection of legal rights to intellectual property is a time-honored tradition. And, to some extent, it worked in the older, slower moving, more stable world of the earlier portion of the last century. 
But our study we found that between 1985 and 1995, a massive shift in the “clock speed” of business occurred. When this shift happened, particularly in higher technology industries, most legal instruments and strategies became obsolete. Terms and conditions were old and stale before the ink was dry.
However, the vast majority of lawyers tended to their legacy thinking.
In Silicon Valley, some legal thinkers began to realize that that the half-life their client’s technolgy was only 6 months, and thus the half-life a contract might be the same. Then, for some, the focus began to shift.
The Best Engine of Innovation companies have shifted their legal thinking, sometimes dramatically. They believe:
- It is better to invent the future than protect the past
- Litigation, ultimately, has very limited value as a legal strategy, either offensive or defensive
- In a fast moving world, where innovation was paramount, the value of the contract was inversely proportional to its volume of pages
- Contracts, while still having value, needed to be coupled with other key agreements
- We have been able to extract some of the core elements of this legal thinking, along with legal templates for increasing the innovation flow, its speed of development, and the capacity to produce win-win results.
The Engines of Innovation Program
will outline the criteria for success,
the key processes and practices, and
how to implement these best-in-class
legal tools and skill sets in your company
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