UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business has inaugurated a new center to promote the school’s thought leadership in the vibrant, complex field of intellectual capital management.
The new Tusher Center for Management of Intellectual Capital was announced at Innovation and Competition: The Role of Patents and Copyrights, a conference held July 14 at UC Berkeley. The event was organized by Prof. David J. Teece, the Thomas T. Tusher Professor of Global Business, (pictured) who will also serve as the faculty director of the Tusher Center.
Thomas Tusher, BA 63, former Levi Strauss & Co. President and COO, and the Haas School’s Business Leader of the Year in 1996, established the center.
The center will address research, funding, and outreach related to intangible assets and long-run enterprise-level competitiveness. It will be housed at the Haas’s School’s Institute for Business Innovation.
In his opening conference remarks, Teece said that in today’s global economy, intellectual property, know-how, relational capital, brands, and corporate culture are often more important than tangible assets and financial capital.
“Tangible assets matter, but even in resource-rich places like Australia and North Dakota, the path to riches involves building and leveraging intangible assets,” he said. “These assets can anchor the long-run advantage of both firms and nation states.”
A primary concern of the Tusher Center is to transcend the complex fields of intellectual capital, including antitrust legislation, international trade, business strategy and organization, science and technology policy, and communications policy, Teece said.
The conference drew high-level experts from around the world. David Kappos, former under secretary of commerce for intellectual property and director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, highlighted the conflicts between patents and antitrust laws in his keynote. Haas Adjunct Professor Henry Chesbrough, PhD 97, faculty director of the Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation, addressed the opportunities granted by open innovation. Chief policy officer and director for international affairs at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Shira Perlmutter also spoke.
For more information on the Tusher Center for the Management of Intellectual Capital, visit http://businessinnovation.berkeley.edu/intellectual-capital/tusher-center.