MarkCrest Intellectual property monetization since 2004

MarkCrest Intellectual Property Strategic Capital builds on the ceaseless change that drives the financial-services sector: new structures, new technologies and new forms of competition. Seizing the opportunities that change brings is critical.

In services businesses, strategic capital generally means people. In the new business world, intellectual property, not factories, creates the highest return on investment. Improving your return on these assets takes different kinds of investment, including:

• Identifying the skills and resources you need
• Establishing knowledge-management practices
• Creating social networks where people can find experts
• Becoming more responsive, to build agile teams

MarkCrest helps with this balancing act, weighing the needs of different resources against the need to appear as one cohesive company. Sales coverage and deal structure can become complicated, with different types of contracts, changes in creation, risk assessment, negotiation and other administrative processes involving intellectual property. MarkCrest handles these details so management and companies can focus on their core business.

Different business models can measure success in different ways, and even when the strategic metrics are the same, the results are not always comparable. Financial and professional organizations are reshaping their operations and launching new activities. The challenge for a business is to seize emerging opportunities while controlling the risks of today’s fast-paced, ever-changing world of financial and professional services.

MarkCrest develops programs for these exposures. It identifies management liability, fidelity, fiduciary and the various forms of errors-and-omissions liability, and looks at the specific risks associated with intellectual property, to build a strategy that manages those risks economically.

MarkCrest builds a funding model that gives you the best possible access to the capital markets, to drive the research and development of your intellectual property, and develops strategies to launch it into markets and licensing channels.

MarkCrest can provide a strategic-capital evaluation, a risk model and a funding proposal for the development and marketing of your financial intellectual property.

MarkCrest Intellectual Property Creative Intelligence starts from a simple observation: with profitability and competitive pressures mounting, the priority for companies today is to realize greater business value from their intellectual property.

MarkCrest focuses on value propositions for financial intellectual property, and on the related technologies, products and support services.

Before the 1990s, only a few companies considered intellectual property a crucial element of their business. In the 1990s that perspective changed, and many companies began to emphasize developing their intellectual property, losing sight of their fundamental business. MarkCrest brings a new approach, with intelligent infrastructure and resource strategies that let individuals and companies adopt operating models that develop, compete and succeed in the financial-services licensing industry.

To extract value from ideas, firms must rethink the connection between business and intellectual property. Rather than settling for alignment, companies should aim for fusion. They need to look at the relationships between the different parts of their organization and its future, define a viable way to achieve their results, and work methodically toward their goals and milestones.

Competitive advantage involves intellectual property, and it involves research and development. Yet discretionary dollars are scarce, and every investment needs to yield the highest possible return. By fusing business strategy and intellectual-property strategy, MarkCrest guides the research and development process, so companies can meet earnings targets, improve their competitive position and build a long-term platform for growth.

With every challenge comes an opportunity. MarkCrest created the Steps Wizard to guide you through the process: it lets you build your own path with knowledge gathered from decades of experience.

MarkCrest Intellectual Property Products & Opportunities starts from this understanding: success in business services depends on a company’s ability to position itself as an indispensable part of its customers’ value-creation strategy, by providing a valued service and creating more value overall.

MarkCrest has one priority: create value for all parties.

While companies and industries care about meeting customer requirements, they are naturally organized around their core products. Most financial-services companies organize their services as products. Services businesses are overwhelmingly customer-facing, fast-paced and people-intensive. They operate in an environment very different from the inward focus of a traditional, product-only business.

In financial services, profits depend on customers buying value-added products. Many companies offer services that no longer set them apart from their competitors. MarkCrest develops value-creating services that carve out a market in competitors’ value chains and also raise those customers’ switching costs. Even services that no longer set a company apart can regain that difference through cross-marketing and licensing. Companies can press this positional advantage and become ever more indispensable to their customers.

When growth slows, many companies focus on their strongest products, cut costs through process improvement, or use successful platforms to expand into adjacent markets. When those traditional tactics reach the point of diminishing returns, firms often turn to services for much-needed revenue. A recurring revenue stream, with less fixed capital and higher margins, is both important and attainable. Intellectual property delivers these value-added product packages within existing customers’ business models: enhance, not change.

Designed and operated on a MarkCrest business model, a new value-added product can work within the business and add to its bottom line without significant cost, building additional revenue on both sides of the equation.

MarkCrest’s focus is to build, manage and develop these products with its clients, creating the value chain for their customers and clients and exploiting opportunities on all sides of the equation.