Why some IP Teams Fail, and How to Make Them Scale

At the IP Dealmakers Forum May 13, 2026, I had the pleasure of moderating a panel discussion on why some IP teams fail while others scale successfully.

Together with Ceyda Maisami from HP, Mitsuaki Matsumura from IBM and Toni Santamaria from Adalvo, we explored three factors that repeatedly emerged as critical to long-term success for every IP organisation: who owns and defines the mandate of the IP function, how to structure and resource IP teams for the best impact, and how to measure what actually matters. This article is based on our discussion.

You Get What You Design Your IP Team to Deliver

The first discussion topic was ownership of decisions. Is the IP team a support function or a business function? Should it sit under legal, technology or somewhere else entirely? The interesting part was that there was no universal answer. Different reporting lines can work extremely well, and equally, any structure can fail if executed poorly.

What became clear, however, was that the reporting line shapes the behavior and priorities of the IP organisation. If IP is expected to drive monetisation, licensing or business growth, then treating it as a business function gives it stronger tools and mandate to succeed. If the primary expectation is risk management and legal protection, reporting to legal may be the right fit. If technology leadership, innovation support, and R&D alignment are the key priorities, then a reporting line into technology can make perfect sense.

In practice, the outcome often reflects the structure. Organisations tend to optimise for what leadership expects them to deliver. This is why reporting lines matter, even if there is no single “correct” model.

Designing IP Teams for Impact

The second topic focused on how to design winning IP teams and how to avoid organisational failure. Here again, there was no single formula. Some organisations rely heavily on generalists who oversee broad IP matters and bring in specialist expertise only when needed. Others build highly specialised organisations with deep expertise in patents, trademarks, licensing, litigation, standards or transactions.

The panel discussion suggested that the strongest organisations usually find the right balance between breadth and specialisation. The same applies to outsourcing. Some companies maintain large in-house teams covering almost every function internally, while others intentionally keep lean internal teams and rely extensively on external counsel and specialised providers. Neither approach is automatically superior. The challenge is finding the right mix of skills, scalability and operational efficiency for the organisation’s actual business needs.

AI naturally became part of this discussion as well. The common view was quite pragmatic. AI is already being used in IP work and should be used more widely, both by IP organisations and by their service providers. At the same time, accountability must remain with humans. Someone must ultimately stand behind the advice, the filing strategy, the licensing position, or the business recommendation.

An interesting point was that sophisticated IP organisations are no longer evaluating service providers only on legal or technical expertise. Increasingly, they also want to understand the AI roadmap of their external providers. How are they integrating AI into workflows? How are they improving efficiency and analytics? How are they developing new capabilities? Smart IP teams increasingly expect their partners to evolve technologically together with them.

Measuring What Actually Matters

The final discussion topic was IP metrics and measuring them. This is perhaps one of the most difficult questions in IP management, because the value created by IP is often indirect.

Opinions varied on whether traditional metrics such as number of patents filed or invention disclosures are truly meaningful. Quantity alone rarely tells the full story. Quality, strategic relevance, and business alignment matter just as much, if not more.

In organisations with direct IP monetisation businesses, measurement can be relatively straightforward. Revenue generation, profitability, licensing growth or deal activity can be measured directly. In ecosystem-driven organisations, metrics may focus more on the number of partnerships, collaborations or new commercial relationships created.

IP strategy work is much harder to quantify. How do you measure the value of freedom to operate? How do you measure a risk that never materialised because the strategy worked? These are difficult questions. In some sectors, however, the link becomes clearer. In pharmaceuticals, for example, missing the market entry window can have very direct and measurable commercial consequences. There, IP timing and exclusivity management can be tied closely to business outcomes.

It is also worth remembering that organisations often get what they measure. If IP teams are managed through overly rigid quantitative metrics alone, there is a risk that even highly capable and results-driven teams begin optimising for the measured targets rather than for the company’s broader strategic success. Metrics can be valuable tools, but if applied too narrowly, they may unintentionally steer behaviour in the wrong direction.

There Is No Single Winning Formula, Only Different Paths to Success

One of the strongest conclusions from the panel was that there are rarely absolutely right or wrong answers in building successful IP organisations. Different companies can succeed with very different models. Much like cooking, there can be many excellent recipes for a great soup. The real challenge for IP leadership is understanding which ingredients matter most for their own organisation and finding the right balance between them.