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TM Checker
Discover more about TM Checker, one of our latest ventures.
Similarly, innovation is a core part of how we work. This includes having innovation as one of the four strategic objectives of IP Australia, as outlined in the Corporate Plan. This objective has two components:
- Increase innovation and adaptiveness in our stewardship of the IP rights system.
- Create innovative contemporary digital and data driven customer services and staff experiences.
We view innovation as a strategic tool to help us achieve a world leading IP system, one that meets the needs of our customers and enables Australians to benefit from great ideas.
Innovation framework
We operate in a fast-changing operating environment. Given this uncertainty, IP Australia needs to ensure that it is continually testing its assumptions and exploring how it can do things better. We have an innovation framework in place to help the agency develop a diverse portfolio or mix of initiatives and activities that can help it learn and apply new approaches. This means that innovation is not owned by any one single team; instead it is something that is expected from across the agency.
IPAVentures
In 2021, we created the IPAVentures team to establish a rigorous, disciplined and sustainable approach to breakthrough innovation for the IP rights system. The team takes a business ventures approach to rapidly explore new opportunities, using a stage gated approach to develop, test and refine ideas and then prototype and develop those deemed most promising.
As part of a mix of innovation activity we concentrate on rapidly exploring new opportunities and emerging issues to better understand how we can meet our ambition of a world leading IP system to ensure Australians benefit from great ideas. The exploratory nature of the work means that it is often looking at what could be rather than taking a position on what should be. Our work seeks to stimulate conversations and, where appropriate, develop new solutions for the IP system.
| IPAVentures offerings | Purpose |
| Discovery work | To uncover the key issues and landscape within a particular topic/area of interest. |
| Provocations | To provide a sense of different scenarios and elicit feedback about how these may play out in reality - to test understanding of what could happen in the IP ecosystem, to help inform any later discussions about should happen. |
| Concept prototyping | To give a sense of how differing concepts or interventions might work in practice, to help test thinking about what the appropriate role of IP Australia might be, without yet taking a position on whether they are desirable. |
| Full product | To de-risk and provide confidence about the workability of a particular product/intervention before the agency commits to it as BAU. |
Since its inception in November 2021, IPAVentures has undertaken several ventures. Each of these ventures have helped the agency to better understand its role in a changing operating environment.
TM Checker (2022)
A full product. This involved the development of an AI-assisted tool to check potential trade marks. This tool was targeted at small-to-medium enterprises who were deemed at risk of being unaware of the trade mark system or engaging too late. The aim was to increase the number of businesses making a deliberate decision about whether or not a trade mark was correct for them.
Generative AI and the IP system (2023)
A series of provocations. This 12-week discovery process resulting in a series of provocations to help reduce uncertainty about the potential ramifications of generative AI on the registered IP rights.
IP for Social Good (2023-2024)
A prototyping of concepts. This work involved an exploration of how the IP system might be used to achieve social outcomes as well as economic ones. It included the development and testing of 3 concepts for how that could be done in practice.
OpenIP (2024)
Discovery work and provocations. This 12-week discovery process resulting in a series of provocations and exploratory concepts for how the IP system might learn from open movements (such as open source) and vice versa.
IPAVentures is part of a broader portfolio of innovation activity happening across our organisation. IPAVentures focuses on innovation outside of the area of enhancement-oriented innovation:
- breakthrough not incremental innovation
- externally focused to address the needs of customers
- designed for the future of the IP system
- reducing uncertainty to help the agency executive have the confidence to invest (or not) in particular options.
IPAVentures applies a strategic, disciplined and rigorous approach, backed by its:
- Strategic focus: We aim to design, build, and deliver breakthrough innovations.
- Methodology: Our team employs a product-led, customer-centric innovation approach.
- Governance: Projects are overseen by a dedicated Venture Board that helps ensure the work is guided by strategic needs.
Our approach is adapted from a business ventures approach, where new ventures are spun up alongside existing business operations. Applied in the public sector context, we focus on providing the space, time and resources to explore new opportunities and issues, while reducing the uncertainty around them as quickly (and cheaply) as possible. The aim is to move quickly when the uncertainty is greatest (i.e. when we know least about what might be needed, what might work or what would be useful). In this way, we can provide greater confidence for the agency about where to invest.
Our process focuses on the two phases of innovation and incubation, strengthening up promising new opportunities until they are ready to fend for themselves.
Innovation
- Identify the growth territory: a growth territory is a framing for new areas for opportunities that fit with the strategic needs of the agency. For instance, ‘Revisit our purpose’ was the frame the team used in 2023, which then led to three of our subsequent ventures.
- Scope the growth territory: undertaking research and gathering insights to help understand the opportunity space. This stage generally involves a lot of workshops, stakeholder interviews and research.
- Identify discrete opportunities: rapidly develop, iterate and refine a range of ideas under the growth territory and test and validate with internal and external stakeholders.
- Pitching: the team presents a shortlist of concepts to the Venture Board for their consideration, including what, how it would work, why now and why us, the potential impact, and ‘burden of proof’ questions (questions that would need to be answered to know whether the concept was worthwhile).
- Validate the concepts: the top two concepts are then further developed and tested. This stage involves identifying and quickly testing a range of hypotheses to help build an understanding of the viability, feasibility and desirability of the concepts.
- Pitching: the team presents a fuller and more detailed pitch back to the Venture Board for their consideration, including detailed examination of the key issues, what would be required from the agency for it to proceed (i.e. staffing or financial investment).
- Sometimes a concept may be deemed interesting and worth exploration through a 12 week set of discovery sprints rather than taking through to a ‘build’. This may be because the opportunity space is still uncertain and the key aim is to learn more (such as with the exploration of the potential ramifications of generative AI on the IP rights system).
Incubation
- Once, or if, the Venture Board chooses a concept to be built into something tangible, the team works through a stage-gated process to prototype and build out a minimum viable product.
- This product is then iteratively developed against a number of proof points, to provide the Venture Board the confidence they need to decide whether or not to continue with it, or to cease the activity.
Get in touch
If you would like to know more about our ventures you can reach out to us at mdb-ipaventures@ipaustralia.gov.au.