Intellectual Ventures Worldwide
At Intellectual Ventures, we know that great inventors and fantastic inventions can be found all around the world, from rapidly emerging places such as China and India, to countries long known for their leadership in innovation such as the USA and Japan. Unfortunately, we have also found that no matter where they reside, many inventors lack the financial, technical, and network resources required to effectively shepherd their best ideas from invention through to monetization. We launched our worldwide invention development effort in 2007 to help address this challenge and to offer support to the world’s inventors.
Our worldwide efforts help address another emerging challenge: as technology grows ever more complex, many companies are seeking additional ways to supplement their own internal R&D efforts with new channels of outsourced, external innovation. Intellectual Ventures supports these companies in a variety of ways, including through managed access to our quickly expanding global inventor network.
We now collaborate with over 1,000 inventors at more than 150 universities, research institutions, and companies in seven countries worldwide. Some of the inventors we partner with also work out of their garage as independent inventors, and many have started their own invention companies simply to work more closely with us. We provide all of our partner inventors access to our detailed analysis describing the latest and most interesting global problems needing solutions. When appropriate, we invest in the best of the solutions our partners invent for us by funding further research and proof–of–concept work. We also fund all the costs of gaining global protection for the best of the several thousands of inventions we see, and we work diligently to find the most appropriate global commercialization opportunities.