Imec (A): creating value through a new approach to IPR Management

Abstract

This is the first of a two-case series (308-225-1 and 308-226-1). IMEC - a successful Belgian research institute in nano-electronics - represents an innovative and successful open innovation response to the growing challenges of technology innovation in the semiconductor industry. IMEC offers a creative public-private partnership approach to pursue new generation technologies, with the support of both public funds and industry membership funds.There are several issues that can be pursued through this case. How public and private sources of research funding work in practice? How academic research goals do or do not comport with industry research goals? How industrial research is organised in a capital intensive, rapidly advancing industry? The role that intellectual property can play in catalysing advanced research within an open innovation model? The role of business models, and how they enable and constrain research? The case shows how IMEC is confronted by an investment decision that is on an entirely different scale from anything undertaken before: whether or not to raise and invest more than US$1 billion to upgrade its facilities and equipment to research 300mm wafer semiconductor technology research. This particular setting opens up broader questions about IMEC's existing business model, its open intellectual property rights model, etc In this sense, this decision will force both the strengths and the limits of the IMEC model into the open.