KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 21 — Intra-organisational marketing (IOM) or internal marketing is the process by which an innovation unit within a large organisation markets itself within the organisation to raise awareness of its existence and the services offered to the organisation’s employees.
The typical innovation process supports technology transfer from initial disclosure of an idea through to commercialisation and post-deal support. While an understanding of both the technology and the commercial market is crucial to success, the development of a healthy pipeline of inventions is of utmost importance to develop technology effectively. This is where marketing within the organisation becomes crucial. It helps you to build a healthy pipeline of inventions to market. Intra-organisational marketing is comparable to advertising and promoting a company’s products and services to its potential customers. Here the company is the innovation unit and the potential clients are the researchers or inventors.
One of two fundamental models can be employed for IOM:
Beacon Model
This is the model in which the innovation unit (the beacon) constantly raises awareness via various channels to encourage researchers or inventors to approach the innovation unit. Although it may sound like a very passive approach, it requires the implementation of active elements as listed below:
Availability and Distribution of Marketing Material:
This includes IOM leaflet, magazines, newsletters, IOM presentation, websites, social media, departmental notice board adverts, product display cabinets, case studies etc. amongst the researchers or inventors to raise awareness on the existence of the innovation unit and information on the various services offered. The availability of good marketing materials as well as the use of effective marketing channels are important for maximum information penetration into the target research or inventor community.
Departmental Seminars:
This includes organisation of seminars on various topics around technology transfer, innovation and commercialisation such as invention disclosures, intellectual property rights, promotion of inventions, technology licensing, spinout company formation, negotiation of deals, business plan writing etc.
Generally, it is difficult to get good attendance for these seminars as researchers are very busy people and attending seminars on technology transfer and commercialisation is not really a top priority in their list of ‘things to do’. Hence, the innovation unit needs to be tactful in organising these events to enable the best turnout of its target audience. Some of these tactics include:
• Timing - Organising the seminars during seasonal breaks and holidays will to be suitable as most employees tend to be away during these times.
• Attractants - Have ‘promoters’ in place. It helps to bring some well-known speakers in town for a speech or get a researcher to talk about his or her success story – people love to hear stories. Furthermore, good food and drinks always attract people.
• Interaction – We live an era where people tend to easily get absorbed into their mobile phones, tablets and other internet devices during lectures, speeches, meetings, conferences etc. Therefore, making these seminars interactive and intellectually stimulating will bring much value to the session as well as in ascertaining that the researchers will return to any future events organised by the innovation unit.
Organisation Relationship Manager:
Employing an organisation relationship manager can bring much value although this will heavily depend on the actual person employed for the position and the strategy engaged to penetrate the market (i.e. the innovators/researchers) in an organisation.
The role of the ORM is nothing but the creation of strategic and lasting relationships between the researchers and the innovation unit. Therefore, the ideal recruit for this position would have immaculate communication and interpersonal skills, be very strategic in stakeholder management and be a master of perceiving the academic mindset.
Incentives: Incentives are a great approach to attract inventor’s interest. Researchers can be incentivised in many different ways. One of the ways to incentivise the researchers is to publish a ‘Researcher Guidelines’ booklet where information on translational funding schemes, including revenue share policy, and other relevant information is available to convey a clear message on ‘what’s in the bottle’ for the researchers if their invention is successfully transferred.
Some innovation units employ rewards schemes to encourage invention disclosures. These include small monetary rewards for those disclosures that are identified as having commercial potential, running competitions utilising internal funding schemes as grants for winners and including parameters on research commercialisation efforts in performance assessment of researchers.
There are two models by which internal marketing can be executed for encouraging the disclosure of innovative ideas and projects:
The Lighthouse Model
The lighthouse model is one where the researchers and innovators will draw themselves to when they come up with an idea. They would see the innovation unit as the beacon that could provide them with the right direction for further development and commercialisation of their ideas. The lighthouse model can do wonders if executed correctly. The model will suit innovation units with limited resources in terms of manpower (which is often the case) and therefore almost every innovation unit should employ the lighthouse model to promote itself and its services.
If executed correctly, the lighthouse model will encourage many researchers or inventors to proactively approach the innovation unit with new invention disclosures, multiple enquiries or to even catch up with the personnel of the innovation unit for a cup of coffee to build a working relationship to identify any future inventions. Once the internal marketing effort has gained momentum, it must be maintained via continuous efforts and dedication. If the above pointers are strictly followed, the lighthouse model will really work and bring many disclosures consistently.
Technology Audit Model
This is the model in which the innovation unit (the auditor) conducts a formal and a systematic study on all potential IPRs available that will give rise to new inventions disclosures. Technology audits often involve interviews with all researchers in all of the departments. Hence, organisational top-down support can greatly encourage researcher participation in the audit.
Although it is a formal systematic study that could spike up the number of invention disclosures received at any given time point, technology audit model has its inherent disadvantages. Firstly, the researchers feel obliged to participate and disclose but have no real desire to commercialise. Secondly, some researchers might get a clever idea after the audit in which case it might not ever be captured in the audit. Thirdly, it could potentially create a massive backlog of invention disclosures that could take a long time to process especially if the TTO is not well resourced with TTPMs. Such a scenario will also cause frustration amongst some of the curious researchers when significant delays are encountered in bounce back time with the go or no-go decision of the TTO. Fourthly, the technology audit might reveal far too many good inventions that deserve IP protection (patent protection in particular) that far exceeds the available annual budget.
Provided most of the aforementioned issues can be managed effectively, the technology audit model can be efficient in systematically identifying all available IPRs in a short period of time that could significantly improve the number of invention disclosures received by the TTO.
In conclusion, it is important for large organisations to realise the importance of internal marketing and the availability of a well-designed innovation unit for capturing new ideas and helping innovators to drive those with commercial potential all the way through to the market. Awareness of the innovation process and the existence of an innovation unit is critical to enhancing innovation in large organisations.
* Dr Viraj Perera is CEO of PlaTCOM Ventures Sdn Bhd, the national technology commercialisation platform of Malaysia, a wholly owned subsidiary company of Agensi Inovasi Malaysia (AIM) formed in collaboration with SME Corp Malaysia.
