ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights why intangible value is derived from distinctive products and explains how to determine distinctive over commodity products. It describes available tools for determining distinctiveness and provides examples of Intellectual Property (IP) business failure with multi-million dollar projects when the product was not distinctive and this stage was done poorly or ignored. The chapter presents the Ugandan vanilla case study as an example of a distinctive v. non-distinctive product and the six-step method to return higher income to the Ugandan farmers. It discusses specific business strategies including IP tools. IP business tools and strategies work best for distinctive products, rather than more generic, commodity-based products. Branding non-distinctive products coupled with inadequate positioning is the cause of many failed business strategies. Products that work well for IP positioning need not be a haphazard guess, but should be based on careful analytics.
