If we each think back to every intellectual property conference over the past decade, we'd be hard-pressed to identify one that didn't include Portfolio Management as a timely discussion topic. However, when we link all of those discussions together, we find the same stale message: "increase portfolio quality, increase licensing revenue, develop a portfolio strategy".

Frankly, I see little progression of "thought leadership" positions of seminars and conferences from last week, when compared to the advice popularized by thought leaders five or 10 years ago.

On the other hand, I do see a growing number of highly innovative patent owners taking action to step ahead of the thought leaders by applying aggressive new portfolio management methods that allow them to translate thoughts into action.

For example, Intellectual Ventures, and Allied Security Trust, recently hitting the pages of The Wall Street Journal, are just two of the companies that didn't exist a few years ago, yet are building huge portfolios or strong IP positions by leveraging next generation patent information mining tools for rapid identification and acquisition of exceedingly high quality patents.

Without question! Thinking about portfolio management produces no results. Today's new genre of Portfolio Management thought leaders are the "action leaders" not paralyzed by corporate conservatism. They have broken the tradition of following ineffective portfolio management processes.

In much the same way as proactive, high growth companies spawn next generation products more easily that lethargic institutions bound by legacy tooling investments, the heroes of portfolio thought leadership are really action leaders who are implementing innovative approaches to portfolio management. They are building large, high quality patent estates on drastically reduced budgets, and they generating exponentially expanding revenues through more efficient licensing.

Action leadership creates tractable portfolio management performance that translates directly into competitive position, and increased stakeholder value. Dow Chemical continues to be one of the out-front leaders in patent management systems innovation.

Patent owners have three major challenges: (1) overcoming the internal resistance to scuttle home-grown legacy patent management software in favor of new generation tools developed by dedicated patent software publishers (NIH syndrome), and (2) creating objective and reliable measurements of intangible assets. Simply put: "If You Can't Measure It, You Can't Manage It".

Patent quality is definable, and more importantly, measureable. In Are Scientific Indicators of Patent Quality Useful to Investors?, Hirschey & Richardson concur, noting ".that various scientific measures of patent quality have positive and statistically significant effects on stock prices."

Next generation software tools now reliably transcribe patent quality indicators into measurable scores, including patent validity, claim scope, technology advancement, and many others. They provide managers with computed information needed to support management decisions regarding litigation and licensing, portfolio triage, enforcement strategies, competitive intelligence, and most importantly, a method of measuring improvement in stakeholder value.

The Third challenge: putting Thoughts into Action in order to claim Leadership.