J.D. and M.B.A. degrees represent a shiny bullet point on an intellectual property attorney’s or capital investor’s resume. But it is the capacity for continued curiosity and learning which provides the backbone for either’s success.
For IP attorneys and capital investors alike, education should not end upon receipt of a diploma; it should continue indefinitely. Continuing education should integrate continuously changing business-specific information on both micro- and macro-levels with academically learned principles. An advanced degree is the foundation for so many other educational building blocks that are vital to successfully support a business’s ambitions. As professionals, we should acknowledge and accept that our roles require solving problems that were once not contemplated because, for example, the technology or the competition had not even existed until now. We should be responsible for learning about a business’s technology, acquiring a deep understanding of the business’s competitive industry and marketplace dynamics, and familiarizing ourselves with the business’s short- and long-term goals. It means fusing our business-, technology-, and industry-specific knowledge with our academic backgrounds and our abilities to think outside the box in order to determine an avenue, or two, for a business to achieve its commercial objectives—all of which are motivated by our shared intellectual curiosity, where the competition-driven, dynamic marketplace represents the ongoing stimulus for this continuous intellectual curiosity.
It is this shared intellectual curiosity that inherently results in consistent commercial success when it comes to legal- or investment-based determinations. And it is this intellectual curiosity that represents an important commonality between a great IP attorney and a great capital investor. While there are certainly differences between IP attorneys and capital investors, the ultimate shared goal of furthering a company’s business objectives provides such substantial overlap in the foundational building blocks towards success so as to merge, or even conflate, the central characteristics to consider in selecting, or performing the role of a great IP attorney and a great capital investor.
Read the full article here: Two Sides of The Same Coin