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If your impression of an inventor comes from Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Alva Edison or is the fanciful inventor pictured above, you will not be prepared for Kristen Eckart. The bright-eyed and outgoing Eckart has had a 20-year career at Corning where she was named on five patents. She later joined IP.com, where she helps users with the company’s IP intelligence software.

Eckart is a mechanical engineer by education (Alfred University, New York). Her patents are related to a product you use all day long: your smart phone. Corning is the second-largest glass manufacturer in the U.S. (behind PP&G) and is the creator of Gorilla Glass.

Now in its seventh version, Gorilla Glass has been installed on 8 billion devices by over 45 OEMs, according to Corning’s website. Innovation in a transparent material is not obvious, but was quite apparent to Apple CEO Tim Cook, who introduced the iPhone 13 last September with a claim that it could be dropped from a great height—and all that would shatter would be your preconceptions of glass as fragile.

Corning has reimagined glass, a material we all took for granted, with timely innovation. We learned from Eckart that innovation at companies like Corning is no accident. Corning has taken innovation to heart. The company equips its engineers and scientists with the tools to innovate, including innovation software.

New York’s Tech Valleys

Corning is one of many highly innovative companies in New York state.  Hurt by losses in heavy industry in the previous century, as were other Rust Belt regions around Pittsburgh and Buffalo, New York state has revived its economy with technology and innovation. IP.com is located in the Rochester area, the third-largest metropolitan area in New York State (after New York City and Buffalo). It is the birthplace of Kodak, a company as famous for innovating as it is for not capitalizing on it (more on that later). Also, Xerox was founded in Rochester in 1906.  

After her innovations at Corning, Eckart chose to up her innovation game and came to IP.com. And what could be more innovative than developing an AI-powered, cloud-based software platform to support the lifecycle of innovation, she asks.

Eckart echoes the desire of the modern workforce that values not just innovative companies, but companies where innovative ideas come from all ranks. In a recent Fast Company survey, 91 percent of respondents said it was important to work at an innovative company but only 63 percent felt as if new ideas come equally from junior and senior staff.

Eckart used innovation software before, though it “was not as good as IP.com,” she laughs. “But seriously, ours is not clunky or bulky. I can get to the results very quickly,” she says, and credits IP.com’s implementation of AI for the difference.

Patent databases have been in existence for decades, but searching required the use of Boolean logic—not natural language search such as Google has made popular today.

“Patent database search tools still use classic syntax and keywords, which by their nature cannot find accurate, actionable data,” says Eckart. “That is really a thing of the past. We offer a more modern-day solution, utilizing both natural language and semantic searching, which yields more relevant results, compiled from our large global database of patent and non-patent literature.”

IP.com offers defensive publishing as well, explains Eckart. Defensive publishing, the act of publication to a prior art database that is publicly searchable, is an effective first step in certifying ownership and origin of an innovation—and takes far less time than getting a patent.

“If you are in a small company trying to come to market, 18 months is a long time to wait for a patent—especially as we're trying to innovate,” she says.

While engineers routinely improve products with each revision, and come up with altogether new products, they rarely recognize what they have done as innovation and are even less likely to document it, according to Eckart.

The mere act of recording an innovation in a place where a search can find it may be enough to protect another from issuing a patent on the very same innovation at a later date. “Besides, it is quicker and cheaper,” says Eckart.

Engineers may miss writing their ideas or describing their creations in notebooks, tapping into their inner Da Vinci—or more often than not, they scribble on sticky notes or whatever is handy in a rush to get to the next project. The engineering notebook is a relic from a bygone age, according to creators of IP intelligence software. Today, a company must innovate or die a lingering death in the marketplace. The company must have a process, best practices and tools in place to facilitiate innovation. For the most innovative companies, this means IP intelligence software.

“We’ve developed a modular approach to the life cycle of patent development,” says Joshua Volpe of IP.com.

Volpe sees innovation not as something that is nice to have, but as something necessary for a company’s survival.

An innovative company will launch a new product. There will be no other like it. The company can name its price and assure itself a hefty margin. And then, if the product proves popular, it’s off to the bank.

The best example of this, of course, is Apple’s iPhone and what may be the most successful product launch in history. Apple assured themselves of a high margin and when sales of the iPhone took off, that margin made Apple the most profitable tech company ever with gross margins of around 40 percent. Another famous example is Tesla. Introduced with prices—and margins—higher than any EV before it, the Tesla succeded in making Elon Musk the richest person on Earth.

Both companies set their respective markets on fire with their innovations. But the pressure to remain innovative is immediate and the competition is intense. Apple’s biggest innovation, the iPhone, was introduced almost 15 years ago, giving competitors more than enough time to catch up with their smart phones. The sleek styling of the Tesla Model S remains basically the same since it rolled off the assembly line in 2012.  

Failing to see and execute on the business potential of a world-changing idea brings up the case of Eastman Kodak. Kodak may be considered an example of both successful innovation and a failure to innovate. In 1978, Steven Sasson, a young electrical engineer (MSEE, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) got a patent for the first digital camera while working for Kodak. It took 18 years before the image produced could compete with the image from Kodak’s photographic film, the company’s main product. Kodak buried the invention, afraid to lose revenue from the film products it was famous for. Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012 after failing to capitalize on its own innovation.

“In order to get the prime price points, and avoid the price decrease, especially of consumer products, a company needs to stay ahead and make sure they can keep getting those high price points,” says Volpe. “Companies really need to innovate. They have to have the next big thing in their back pocket.”

“IP.com helps connect engineers, businesses and patent professionals in a way that they can fully capitalize on their innovation in a do-or-die landscape,” adds Eckart.

The alternative to a culture of constant innovation is a lapse into a market crowded with products that have reached parity on technology and, after losing any cachet around their brand, leave companies to compete on price alone. With margins decreasing with every price cut, companies with no further innovation go down a slow spiral before an exit from the market.

Volpe sums up with the four reasons why innovation is vital to an ongoing business. First, innovation will grow a business. Secondly, innovation allows your company to stay ahead of its competitors. Then, innovation can take advantage of new technology. Finally, an innovative company will attract new talent.