William Barrett
Vice Presi¬dent, Intellectual Property for Advanced Liquid Logic, Inc., in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, U.S.A.

Christopher Price
CEO of LAAM Science, Inc., in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, U.S.A.

Thomas Hunt
Director of Intellectual Property at Markem Corporation, Keene, New Hampshire, U.S.A.

The common metaphor for a patent portfolio has always been a sedentary piece of real estate with a picket fence. But patent picket fences are insufficient for protecting ideas in todays intense global competition. Companies that thrive today are only those that can deliver innovative products and services to consumers again, and again, and again. And, the globalization of innovation is changing the way in which companies achieve this goal. In our book, iProperty: Profiting from Ideas in an Age of Global Innovation,1 we argue that todays innovator companies, whether large or small, local or international, can benefit from a global strategy and global execution backed by a healthy dose of business-driven common sense. In the present article, we set the stage for developing a global intellectual property strategy by surveying some of the important factors shaping the way that the world innovates.