The Invisible Edge: taking your strategy to the next level using intellectual property.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: Brief article - Book review

The Invisible Edge: Taking Your Strategy to the Next Level Using Intellectual Property. By Mark Blaxill and Ralph Eckardt. Portfolio, 352 pages. $27.95.

Authors Mark Blaxill and Ralph Eckardt, former Boston Consulting Group colleagues, now work at an investment advisory firm focused on intellectual property and are fellows at an independent IP think tank. That's given them a rare, nuanced view of the IP world, as well as access to many relevant resources.

Those are on effective display in this long, complex but highly informative book, which offers both narratives about businesses that have used intellectual property successfully and advice for companies eager to use it to capture market share, get premium pricing and (hopefully) dominate their markets.

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The authors look at a variety of new, technologically sensitive markets: open-source software, genomics, mobile commerce and social networks like Facebook, to name a few. They posit that the key to competitive advantage is to own the distinctive parts of the business that...