The drive to innovate leads to the creation of Intellectual Property, which can be ideas, software, processes and methods, tooling or anything else that provides a competitive edge. Listen as our experts share how intellectual property is created and how to drive a research innovation strategy in enterprise tech. Featured experts: Ilyas Iyoob, Global Head of Research, Kyndryl Lorie Goins, Head of IP Strategy, Kyndryl
”Innovation means doing something new that improves a product, process or service.”1 For companies, that can reflect the way a company brings constant value to their customers' business or life.
The drive to innovate leads to the creation of intellectual property, which can be ideas, software, processes and methods, tooling or anything else that provides a competitive edge.
Listen as our experts share how intellectual property is created and how to drive a research innovation strategy in enterprise tech. Our Behind the Patent series also explores patents by Kyndryls.
Sarah B. Nelson00:02
Welcome back to another episode of The Progress Report. I'm your host, Sarah B. Nelson, Chief Design Officer for Kyndryl Vital. Innovation is one of those things that everybody wants and a lot of organizations even crave it. But that road from invention to innovation to growth, it's not always clear. I noticed that sometimes we can't even agree on what innovation is. Is it a destination? Is it a thing? Is it an approach? A process? How do you systematize it? What is this thing called innovation. So today, we're going to discuss how intellectual property is created, and how to drive a research innovation strategy in enterprise tech. We'll discuss how the drive to innovate leads to the creation of intellectual property, which can be ideas, software processes and methods, tooling or anything else that provides a competitive edge. Joining me today are two of my fellow Kyndryls. Dr. Ilyas Iyoob: he's the Global Head of Research. Prior to Kyndryl, he was the Chief Data Scientist at IBM and he pioneered the seamless interaction between machine learning and operations research in the fields of autonomous computing, space tech, and blockchain. He advises venture funded companies serves on the faculty of the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, and in 2001, he was awarded the prestigious World Mechanics Prize by the University of London. Welcome, Ilyas.
Ilyas Iyoob01:24
Thanks, great to be here.
Sarah B. Nelson01:26
And now we also have Lorie Goins, who is the Head of IP Strategy here at Kyndryl. She is an experienced IP professional and she brings both technology and legal expertise to various IP related positions. She was an IP Business Development Executive at IBM. She was a group legal counsel at Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions and Patent Analysis at the SAS Institute. Before attending law school she co founded and served as the CTO of a technology startup, managed both strategic marketing and software development at Fujitsu, oversaw products at Accenture in the utilities practice and perform program and project management at Verizon. And currently, she serves as the President of the North Carolina IP Alliance. So welcome, Lorie.
Lorie Goins02:10
Thank you, Sarah. Happy to be here.
Sarah B. Nelson02:13
So we have a lot to cover today. We're going to talk a little bit about how we describe innovation. I like the framework that innovation is something novel, useful, not obvious, and implemented. But what that looks like can vary. And it can be in a context and everything from something that transforms the whole world, to something that enables a company to do something they've never done before. I also think it's interesting that there's innovation, as in to innovate. And then there's an innovation. So those are kind of the ways I look at it. But I'm really curious, Lorie, what does innovation mean to you? And how does IP relate to that?
Lorie Goins02:52
I like to define innovation as an incremental improvement that provides value to either the customer or the company. So basically, you're starting out with an existing problem and coming up with a solution. So it doesn't have to be a big bang, earth shattering, it can be a small incremental improvement, a better way of doing things, a quicker way more efficient. So moving into how does innovation and IP relate to each other. I like to see IP more as a tool bag of options that we use to protect innovation. The ultimate goal is to provide that value to either the customer or the company. And we look at innovation is that process of taking an idea to market then as you're doing that you need to analyze which IP rights should we apply to make sure that we're protecting the idea if necessary. You know, sometimes when we think about the future and envision, what protection do we need, we may decide to go down the patent route, we could think about just publicizing it as a publication, if we don't feel that we'll ever enforce it. And we just want to contribute it to the betterment of society as a whole. We can follow trade secrets. And then copyright is something that becomes more important as we get into generative AI and the data lakes that are used to train the large language models. So they they are related but yet distinct, but they they go hand-in-hand.
Sarah B. Nelson04:27
Same question to you, Ilyas, how do you think about innovation? And then the second part of that is what role does research play in driving innovation and growth?
Ilyas Iyoob04:37
Yeah, so Lorie and I, we work hand-in-hand. And so we've got research and IP that sort of serve each other. But, you know, if you step back a second, everybody wants to innovate, but it's the how you do that in a way that sharpens your focus and doesn't spread you thin and I like to think of it as the lookout on the ship, right? The person who's there with the binoculars or the folks that are out there looking ahead, helping steer an organization, and watching for things that are coming on the way. So that is what the innovation folks would do the folks that are doing researcher in that space of looking out on behalf of the entire ship. So innovation is that group, the folks who are doing that look out on behalf of the organization, and then, from that spins, the deciding whether you want to plow through a trend, are you going to catch the wave? Or are you going to go around it? And if you are any one of those, then how are you going to take action, and then kind of, you know, roll that down. And of course, then comes IP along with that, and then says, okay, anytime you do build something, how do you protect yourself, but it's, it's very different than it was a few years ago, in terms of the paces much faster, things are coming much more quicker onto the field. And so being able to do that quickly is the name of the game today.
Sarah B. Nelson06:04
So here's an assumption I had made. I had it I had assumed that a patent was something you did when it was done, like whatever that solution was, it was done. But what I heard you saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, Lorie, it was that actually it's more of a of a journey towards an innovation. And you said something about like you're protecting it along the way. And so I imagine that there's like points where you're then saying, "Okay, where are we now? What should we do to be able to go to the next step?" Is that a fair interpretation?
Lorie Goins06:33
Yeah, so to get a patent, you have to meet the eligibility requirements: eligible subject matter, novel, useful, non obvious. But you get to determine if we really want to protect it via a patent. And to get a patent, it can either be an actual reduction to practice or a constructive reduction to practice. Constructive means that you've conceived it in your mind, and you can define every step that it would take to produce that invention. And so the patent is really a negative property right granted by a government to allow you to protect that invention that you came up with. A negative property right, meaning that you have to act on it. The the claims provide the metes and bounds like you think of a piece of property, and you can describe exactly where it's located, where its boundaries are. And that's what you're doing in a patent, you're supposed to describe it adequately, that somebody else can read that patent specification, and they themselves then can implement it. So you're sharing all that information in exchange for getting exclusivity to practice it for a time period, that 20 years. But we can determine that when you start talking about patents, it's a very expensive game that you have to play, that if you have a patent, you have to protect it, meaning you have to be willing to go to court to defend it. And that can cost millions, tens of millions of dollars to pursue keeping somebody from practicing your invention. So we at Kyndryl need to determine is a patent the right way to protect that innovation. You know, sharing it with society can be accomplished by publicizing it as well. Where if it's something that we find is core to helping us giving us a competitive advantage that our competitors haven't figured out yet, then we can keep it as a trade secret. Now, that doesn't protect us, if they eventually figure out how to do the same thing we are, it's, you know, nuances that we need to understand where the market is going, where the industry is, what's most important for Kyndryl, because ultimately, we have a responsibility to our shareholders to do the right thing and protect things in the right way.
Ilyas Iyoob09:04
Essentially, if it's something of utmost importance, you definitely want to file it as soon as you can. You know, among all the ideas that are there, you look for the ones that are truly game changing that you really, really want to protect, because it is core to your business and start filing right away. And then you can implement it as in when you are able to do so.
Sarah B. Nelson09:23
So you just said something interesting. How do you know something is game changing?
Ilyas Iyoob09:29
That's the million dollar question, eh?
Ilyas Iyoob09:32
This is where Lorie and our team, the research and IP teams, you tag team because there's a side of it that is core to the business, right? Is it an area that we want to play in? Number one: how far are we willing to go to protect something like this, but then more on a technological perspective also, is this something that we truly feel is gamed changing? Is it novel enough? Are we going to be able to build a business out of this? But in parallel, Lorie's team will also give other criteria, right? Is it defendable in court? Should it be a publication? Should it be a patent? Should be a trade secret? And so on and so forth. So it does happen as both teams working together.
Sarah B. Nelson09:32
Sorry.
Lorie Goins10:18
Inventions are typically - used to be decades - ahead of implementations. The timeframe's dwindling, getting a lot closer, but I use the example of when I was at IBM, I was in the enforcement and monetization group. IBM was willing to go to court to defend particular patents, variety of them, but one of them in particular, was a predecessor to single sign on. When that patent was created back in the 1980s, people didn't envision what Single Sign On is today. But that claim was written broadly enough, such that now it reads on implementations that occurred 10, 15, 20 years later. So, sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you completely miss the boat. And you know, you could have invented it and patented years ago, society never adopted it, you could let that patent lapse, and then you've lost an opportunity to protect and enforce. So it's a fun game.
Sarah B. Nelson11:22
It's interesting, it makes me - Are you all familiar with General Magic? It was an Apple spin-off in the late 80s. Essentially, they had an idea of something that you would hold in your hand that was a phone and had your email on it and had calendars and it would replace your digital planner - it also would fax, so that gives you an idea of like when that was.If you look at the icons that they were designing, they're really familiar to us. So Apple then came in and said, "Oh, this looks interesting. We're going to make the Newton out of it." And then you know sort of what happened with the Newton. But it's interesting when I look at that, and I think about that journey, just like you were saying, Lorie is that there's this journey of like, there's this hypothesis that this group had, and they made prototypes. They actually tried to sell it; it didn't sell well, because people couldn't envision what it was. They were like "I got a filofax. Why would I ever use this phone in my hand? It doesn't make any sense." So it is kind of interesting, what you were saying is like, knowing which piece of that thing that they were thinking about is going to show up later. And it is it sounds like a really complex puzzle from what the both of you are doing.
Lorie Goins12:26
Yeah, because as society a lot of times we are not ready for the innovations that are conceived and invented in a scientist's mind. So it takes us a while to catch up.
Sarah B. Nelson12:39
Well, so this brings me to something for you, Ilyas. So Kyndryl is only in its second year of business. We're coming up, I think maybe on our second anniversary fairly shortly, as an independent company. I'm curious if you're able to define or start to think about how you would define research here? I'm curious where you've arrived in terms of how you how you approach innovation and research, here at Kyndryl.
Ilyas Iyoob13:02
So it's been an interesting journey so far. When we were thinking about setting up research, the first question we had was, "why do we even need it?" So we spoke to a bunch of our clients and said, "Hey, if we had to do something for you, what is that you would need?" And they're actually the ones that gave us this whole concept of the lookout. They said "we're too busy dealing with our day-to-day; can you guys look at our behalf so that we don't have to worry about that?" So we started with that. And that's been a good guiding star, but very soon, we had to deal with this challenge of okay, how do you structure it? We sort of took a blend in between where we have small teams that go across the organization. So for example, we have a small team that does blockchain. We have folks in research, we have people that are in the centers of excellence that are at in different countries. And we also have people from the client teams that are participating in the whole thing. So think of it, you know, Sarah, to take out a page out of your book, right? You know, a slice of the pizza and not the crust, right? You go end-to-end and have a very small team. But that small team is stretched across the entire organization so that they're able to move fast. In Kyndryl, we crowdsource ideas we don't - research is not the only team that comes up with ideas, you get client teams to come up with ideas, you have anybody come up with an idea. And then we just kind of all rally behind that and say, "Hey, that's a good idea. Let's put our hands together" and then kind of build that up. But we do it in cycles of three weeks to six weeks to say, "hey, we need to get something out within three to six weeks. If not, we should quickly change direction."
Ilyas Iyoob13:02
Okay, so Lorie, now we've got crowdsource folks that are moving more quickly. Now we go back to what we were talking about before is how are you then aligning the business strategy and your IP strategy? So you've got all this stuff coming in? How are you sorting through that?
Lorie Goins14:53
As Ilyas said, we work very closely, we work hand-in-hand so I'm embedded in their group and I keep focused on understanding what they're doing. And then work with them to try to determine what is the best way to protect any of the intellectual capital or intellectual property that's coming out of what they're doing. We like to use the Kyndryl philosophy of flat, fast, and focused. So you know, we have a rich heritage having spun out of IBM of over 100 plus years. And we have a lot of smart people, a lot of smart inventors that are used to doing it the way that we did in the past. So this past year, year and a half has really been focused on shaping our strategy of what is the best solution for Kyndryl? We want to make sure that, again, we're looking at the best thing for the corporation and our shareholders by saying, "is this something that aligns with what we're doing today? Is it solving a customer problem? Is that something that we can turn into a product or a solution? It's really trying to understand what the visionaries where they're taking us and determining where do we see the industry in the future? And what is the best solution for Kyndryl?"
Sarah B. Nelson16:14
So Ilyas, then can you share an example of - if you can, if you have some - research initiatives that have led to a significant breakthrough here?
Ilyas Iyoob16:24
So you remember, I said that we crowdsource our ideas. And one of our employees - she's part of our organization - her friend was a firefighter. She's from Spain, and they were responding to a wildfire. And they were a team of five members, and four of them passed away in that fire. He miraculously survived, but the others didn't make it. And so she was pretty down about it. And she started thinking as to why did they have to lose their lives when we have so much technology today? What is it that was missing? An actual monitoring device that collects data on what the oxygen level is, what the carbon monoxide level is nitrogen dioxide, and then other things like temperature, humidity, and things like that. When a firefighter is in the fire, they don't have time to be monitoring their own metrics, right? So that's where the problem lies. There's no shortage of sensors out there. But in this solution, these devices collect data, but it sends it to the fire truck that is sitting close by and there that data is aggregated and processed, for the captain who's kind of monitoring everything. And then, and then it will give recommendations to the to the captain to say, "hey, this person is starting to reach a level of criticality," they're not there yet. But you also have to keep in mind where they're at and how long it's going to take them to come back. So this is something that we took from a true empathetical situation to an idea. So this doesn't go far from our core business, which is running critical infrastructure, right? This is mission critical; it doesn't get any more critical than life itself. And so protecting life, and doing it by analyzing data, but not having to do it on the cloud, doing it on the edge. So this is where AI, IoT, edge, wearables, all this comes to play. And it's all connected to the Kyndryl Bridge. So this is an example of something that we recently - by the way, this team won the Edison award last October, or November. Number one: they've got the gold price for that. And this is something that we shared with the world a couple of months ago.
Sarah B. Nelson18:48
I love examples where it's like a beautiful solution to something that like makes your heart hurt. That impulse, that the person who sort of saw the problem and transformed that into something really meaningful. In Kyndryl Vital, we have a thing called the Kyndryl Vital method. And one of the things that we're looking at, is that intersection between what people need, what the business needs, and what is technically possible. So I think we sort of talked about sometimes is experience-driven innovation; it's where you start with a need and you move from there. And you can also start with obviously with technology, and move out, you could start with the business need, but that all of them have to be working, which is what I hear in that particular story. So I'm thinking about where all of this is going in terms of that intersection between intellectual property and research because we have so many things that are happening in the environment now that seem to be happening really fast. But I'm curious, Lorie in particular, like how do you think intellectual property will evolve over the next few years?
Lorie Goins19:51
Interesting question. So my crystal ball says... So one of the things we really haven't talked about yet is Generative AI, because that is impacting so many pieces of both solutions, as well as thinking of it from an intellectual property aspect. Generative AI tools are being developed and used to create patents to mine for open whitespace areas of where patents can be created. You start looking at generative AI moves into the copyright space, because in order to train those large language models, they have to use large data lakes, large amounts of information. There have been lawsuits because these tools have used inappropriately or unlicensed large datasets. So you also start thinking about the generative AI; it is learning and growing and changing. So who actually is the creator, right? So governments throughout the world have said that it has to be a person who's an inventor or creator. So can you go back and figure out who created the code that originated and how many additional people created or added code in, and you start moving into the open source realm as well. So my crystal ball is all muddy right now; I'm not 100% sure where we're going with all this. I obviously work hand-in-hand with Ilyas to ensure that we're doing the best thing of what we envision for the corporation moving forward.
Ilyas Iyoob21:38
I like - Lorie didn't use this term - but what is it called the in the South? "As clear as mud" Or is that what it is?
Lorie Goins21:46
As clear as mud.
Sarah B. Nelson21:47
It's clear as mud. So this is The Progress Report, so here's my question for you: What does progress look like?
Ilyas Iyoob21:55
Before you can measure progress, you need to be able to measure how you're performing currently, right? And so making sure that our own applications, our clients, if their mission critical applications continue to be maintained at the highest levels of performance and security, that is of utmost importance. And then if we are able to improve the quality of the outcomes, like I'll give you an example of the of our first responders, and if we are able to add more value, mission critical, not only in technology, but mission critical, also in healthcare, also in finance. So identifying whether we're moving the needle on each one of those areas, while making sure that our bottom line is is increasing at the same time.
Sarah B. Nelson22:49
How about you, Lorie, what's progress look like?
Lorie Goins22:52
So for me, progress looks like getting the right balance between patents, trade secrets, and publications when it comes to our innovation. Not having everybody think that their inventions should be turned into a patent. So really understanding the best way to protect Kyndryl as a corporation and provide value back to either our customers or the company itself. So changing the mindset of not everything that's new, novel, nonobvious will be a patent; some of that will be contributed to society as a publication, some of it will keep as trade secrets, and some of it will go forward as patents. So that right balance between protecting our innovations.
Sarah B. Nelson23:40
So this has been a really fantastic conversation. I feel like I just want to talk with you both for hours more about this because I'm having lots of aha moments. And I hope that those that are listening are having some of those too. So I want to thank you both for joining us.
Ilyas Iyoob23:55
Thanks, Sarah.
Lorie Goins23:56
Thank you. Great to be here.
Sarah B. Nelson24:01
Thank you all for joining us on this episode of The Progress Report. Join us in two weeks for our next episode. If you've enjoyed this conversation, be sure to like and subscribe and share it with a colleague who might also be interested. Thank you.