So, whatever your intellectual property is, is there something about it, some intrinsic thing, that makes it valuable?

I'm not, just here, talking about the 'hook' in the case of a popular tune, or the brilliantly crafted line of code that makes a particular application work fast and well. I'm thinking about more elemental stuff: what are the 'atoms' of IP, and what are their properties?

In a song the atoms are musical notes and words. In code, it would be the instruction set. These 'atoms' can't be the big deal, though, because the same set is available, and used, in every example of the craft. Yet, some musicians, and coders, are a lot more successful than others.

I think it's the particular order of the notes or bytes that are the real IP. For example, here are two sets of 91 words pulled from the same passage (and I save space here by noting, rather than repeating words in the first list):

here 8 a 7 have 5 nation 5 dedicated 4 cannot 3 great 3 people 3 shall 3 so 3 they 3 who 3 be 2 but 2 conceived 2 dedicate 2 far 2 from 2 gave 2 living 2 long 2 men 2 new 2 rather 2 these 2 us 2 war 2 what 2 which 2 above 1 add 1 address 1 advanced 1 ago 1 all 1 altogether 1 any 1

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.

In this case the atoms are the words, and it's abundantly apparent that sample 1 and sample 2 are not equal in a human's eyes (though a search engine might see it differently). It's like molecular chemistry: it's not just the atomic components, it's how they are joined that makes all the difference. Graphite and diamonds are made of the same stuff, but it's not put together in the same way.

So, in essence, the work of someone engaged in creating IP can be said to be a job of ordering common components in uncommon ways. Part 1... part 2 tomorrow...
Comments 5:07:03 PM    

Chris Gulker's view from Silicon Valley - in words and pictures