First quarter went so fast!

As always the society year starts with appointments of the committees and meetings with the committee leadership and the LES society presidents. In these kick-off meetings the newly adopted LESI Vision and Mission as well as the priorities for this society year were presented and discussed. My ask for all the committees and national societies is to take our Vision and Mission, think about what they mean to your respective committee or national society and translate them into action – taking into account our priorities for this year.

These will be the priorities for the year 2024-2025:

1. Raise our Visibility Globally

2. Engage & Activate Members, Industry, Partners and Stakeholders

3. Drive a Diversified Funding Model

Our first priority is to raise our visibility globally. Visibility is the starting point of everything we do. Growing membership, being an attractive organization, being relevant for our members, industry, partners and stakeholders – it all starts by being visible.

If we do not communicate about our purpose, our activities and goals, we will lose our relevance in the audience that matters. But if we are visible, we will be heard and we will get the mindshare in the audience, and all of our activities will get boosted.

There are many ways to increase visibility. We need to evolve and embrace the opportunities of social media and other digital channels while maintaining meetings and discussions in real life. LESI intends to support the visibility of committees and national societies and their activities with a multi-channel approach: we will use social media, the Global News, our website, emails and the les Nouvelles journal.

We will also use the support of our global partners’ networks to reach wider audiences – the High-growth Technology Business Initiative, our joint effort with European Patent Office as an example. During this year LESI will also develop easy to use “tips and tricks of Linkedin” to help boost the visibility of our committees and national societies.

Our second priority is engaging and activating members, industry, partners and stakeholders. This is the core of our vision to be the “go-to” global organization for professionals working with intellectual assets.

Serving our members and creating opportunities for them to learn, share and network has always been the key priority. This year I have personally been working hard to bring industry into our activities. Having been in industry myself for the last 17 years, I have first hand knowledge on how valuable LES can be for a business.

We have tested industry-only meetings in a couple of our LESI Annual Meetings now and the feedback has been very positive. LES Benelux took this to the local level in their Annual Meeting with an informal lunch meeting setting. We had an industry delegation visit Chinese authorities and attend the LES China Annual Meeting.

I am expecting these activities to be a kick-off for a more industry-friendly and engaging LES. I think this will also benefit our efforts to activate and engage our members and stakeholders in academia and research institutions, patent and trademark authorities and organizations, and of course also our partners in the expert service industry.

And lastly, our priority is to derive a diversified funding model. Our funding is mainly based on membership fees, supported by any surpluses from annual conferences. We need to create a funding model that enables our organization to reach its goals even if the income fluctuates from one year to the next. We already saw this happening during the pandemic when annual conferences were cancelled. Diversifying our funding means being less dependent on any single source and developing balanced income sources based on our content and valuable partnerships over longer periods.

We have already been running the Thought Leadership Program, the current year being the third consecutive year. The Thought Leadership Program creates valuable online content through a series of webinars over the year, followed by a ”grande finale” workshop at the annual conference. We have seen unique expertise shared by industry thought leaders, business leaders and judges. The program is made possible by our partners who help support it financially and provide their expertise. While this program has created a source of income for LESI, it is carefully curated and not a pay-to-play program. In addition, we are creating partnerships that create value for longer than just one annual conference at a time. These are being piloted with selected partners during the year.

Our next round of meetings with committee leadership and national society presidents is getting closer! I am asking all the committees, as well as all national and regional societies to consider these priorities and again translate our vision and mission into action for this year. We will follow up, share and celebrate the success and learnings together!

#LESisMore

At Your Service,

Sonja London

President of LESI 2024-2025