Who should be responsible for intellectual property management?

Upon hearing the term "intellectual property management," the first thing that comes to many people's minds is likely defensive activities such as filing patent applications and managing intellectual property rights. In practice, however, intellectual property (IP) management is a highly strategic management issue that extends far beyond the administration of IP rights. It encompasses R&D strategy, business strategy, strategic alliances, standardization, licensing, and responses to IP litigation. This article presents several findings from two studies on Chief Intellectual Property Officers (CIPOs), conducted jointly with Professor Masayo Kani of the Faculty of Economics at Meijo University. Both studies address a simple question: How does corporate behavior differ when IP management is handled directly by the chief executive officer (CEO) or delegated to an executive who specializes in IP?

Why is a CIPO needed now?

In recent years, the primary source of corporate value has been shifting from tangible assets to intangible assets such as technology, brands, and know-how. As a result, IP management has evolved from a purely administrative function into a strategic management issue that directly influences a company's competitive advantage. CEOs, however, already carry a wide range of responsibilities. As shown in a 2018 study on CEOs' time management by Michael Porter and colleagues at Harvard Business School, CEOs of large corporations reportedly work, on average, more than 60 hours per week. Requiring them to oversee IP management can further increase their workload. This additional burden on CEOs might enhance overreliance on established industry norms and familiar precedents instead of reliance on complex and uncertain but novel decisions. Professor Kani and I therefore empirically examined how this executive overload influences corporate IP strategy and innovation strategy.

What did the two empirical studies examine?

Our first study used data from the Survey of Intellectual Property-Related Activities conducted by the Japan Patent Office to examine which Japanese firms are likely to exist a CIPO and how the presence of CIPO is associated with corporate IP strategies. Our second study combined the same survey data with patent data to investigate the relationship between the presence of a CIPO and corporate exploratory and exploitative innovation. The first study focuses on the distinctiveness of IP strategy, whereas the second examines the direction of innovation strategy. Both address a common theme: whether assigning responsibility for IP management to a dedicated executive expands a firm's future strategic options or keeps the firm on its existing trajectory. These two studies therefore invite us to view both IP and innovation management not as separate concerns, but as elements of a single management challenge.

What does the CIPO contribute to IP and innovation strategies?

The first study found that larger firms with more extensive R&D activities are more likely to appoint a CIPO. This pattern is consistent with firms using this position to ease the burden on top management. More importantly, firms with a CIPO tend to adopt IP protection strategies that depart more substantially from prevailing practices in their industry. They are more likely to make distinctive choices about which inventions to patent, the technological fields in which to seek protection, and the combination of patents, trademarks and design rights they use. This association was particularly pronounced when the CIPO had prior IP experience and could devote full attention to IP rather than concurrently holding other responsibilities. By contrast, the presence of a CIPO had a limited relationship with IP utilization strategies. This finding also indicates that appropriating business returns from IP rights requires close coordination not only within the IP division, but also across business units.

The second study examined how the presence of a CIPO relates the direction of a corporate innovation strategy. It distinguished between exploration, which involves entering unfamiliar technological domains, and exploitation, which involves deepening and refining existing knowledge. Our evidence showed that, across the manufacturing sector as a whole, firms with a CIPO did not consistently engage in more exploratory innovation. The presence of a CIPO was, however, consistently associated with a weaker tendency to rely excessively on existing technologies and established areas of expertise. In other words, firms with a CIPO were less inclined to overemphasize exploitation. Among firms in high-technology industries, where technological change is rapid and IP management is especially demanding, the presence of a CIPO was also associated with greater exploratory innovation. In addition, the tendency of older companies to avoid exploration and retreat toward exploitation was mitigated to some extent when a CIPO existed. These findings suggest that a CIPO can serve not only as an IP specialist, but also as a coordinator who helps prevent organizations from becoming overly dependent on past successes. By bringing additional options into consideration, a CIPO can broaden the range of choices available to top management when managers might otherwise favor short-term, low-risk alternatives.

Appointing a CIPO is not enough

These studies also have important practical implications. First, appointing a CIPO does not automatically produce effective IP management. A position that exists only in name will have limited influence unless it carries sufficient authority. The CIPO's professional background also matters. Experience in IP, R&D, or marketing may influence both the types of decisions the individual is well equipped to make and the preferences that guide those decisions. For example, extensive expertise in a particular area of IP may make a CIPO more cautious about entering entirely new technological domains. A CIPO with substantial IP experience may therefore help a firm pursue a more distinctive IP strategy, whereas also encouraging greater caution in its innovation strategy.

IP management is not merely a subset of legal affairs or R&D. It is a core aspect of corporate management. Corporate decisions about who will hold this responsibility have important implications for what a company protects, which technological domains it enters, and how far its strategy departs from industry norms. Establishing a CIPO position is not simply a matter of following a management trend. It is an important managerial issue of organizational design that Japanese companies should address as intangible assets assume greater importance. As companies increasingly treat IP not merely as an asset to administer, but as a strategic resource that supports value creation and strategic decision-making, the role of the CIPO is likely to become even more important.

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References

• Nishimura, Yoichiro, and Masayo Kani. 2023. "Empirical Analysis on the Delegation of Authority over Corporate Intellectual Property Activities" (in Japanese). Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Japan Society for Research Policy and Innovation Management, 38, pp. 928-931.
• Kani, Masayo, and Yoichiro Nishimura. 2024. "The Relationship between the Delegation of Authority over Intellectual Property Activities and Corporate Innovation Strategy" (in Japanese). Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Japan Society for Research Policy and Innovation Management, 39, pp. 1082-1086.
• Porter, M. E., and N. Nohria. 2018. How CEOs Manage Time. Harvard Business Review, 96(4), 42-51.

Yoichiro Nishimura／Associate Professor, Faculty of Commerce, Chuo University
Area of Specialization: Management

Yoichiro Nishimura is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Commerce, Chuo University. He holds a Ph.D. in Commerce. Before joining Chuo University in 2019, he served as a Full-Time Lecturer and Associate Professor in the Faculty of Economics, Kanagawa University.
From September 2013 to September 2015, he was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Washington School of Law. Since 2023, he has been served as an Economic Advisor to the Japan Patent Office. Since July 2026, he has been a Visiting Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition in Germany as part of a Japan Patent Office program for fiscal years 2025 and 2026. This program dispatches researchers abroad to study international issues in industrial property rights. In November 2026, he is scheduled to begin an appointment as a Visiting Scholar at the UC Irvine Paul Merage School of Business in the United States. His field of specialization is management.

His major publications include “Does Patent Fee Reform Lower the Bar?” Research Policy (2025, co-authored), “Executive Succession: The Importance of Social Capital in CEO Appointments,” Strategic Management Journal (2018, co-authored), “Patenting Versus Secrecy and SMEs Performance: Evidence from Discounts of Request-for-examination Fee and Patent Annual Fee,” Journal of Intellectual Property Association of Japan (2018, co-authored).

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