The Challenge

Our client was a global leader in the packaging industry, a Fortune 500 company with manufacturing operations across more than 40 countries. Despite its scale, the company’s IP function had suffered years of underinvestment and neglect.

The result was a function that was simultaneously overspending and underperforming. With approximately $3 million in annual IP expenditure and no visibility over where that money was going, the business had lost control of one of its most strategically important assets.

The specific problems we were asked to solve:

• An active and escalating infringement threat with no response strategy
• No coherent IP strategy aligned with business objectives
• Patent filing practices disconnected from commercial priorities
• Zero oversight of IP expenditure – $3M per year uncontrolled
• Outdated asset management systems with poor data integrity
• No IP risk management capability
• Persistent misalignment between regional operations and global headquarters

Our Approach

We structured our engagement in four phases, moving from diagnosis to full implementation over a defined programme timeline.

Phase 1 – Strategic Assessment

We began by aligning leadership on what a well-functioning IP operation should look like, establishing shared definitions of success before diagnosing the gap. This included structured interviews with stakeholders across global operations to surface regional variation and build organisational buy-in from the outset.

Phase 2 – Comprehensive Analysis

Our team conducted a detailed gap analysis against established industry benchmarks, alongside a forensic review of IP spend. This identified significant duplication, misaligned retainer structures with external counsel, and a filing programme that bore little relationship to the company’s actual commercial priorities.

Phase 3 – Solution Design

Working closely with the IP and legal leadership team, we developed a full specification for a modern IP management system, built a restructured external counsel framework, and designed a new patent filing strategy explicitly linked to commercial objectives. We also developed a 3-year budget forecasting model, the first the function had ever had.

Phase 4 – Implementation and Integration

We oversaw full deployment of the new systems, processes, and governance frameworks, including data migration, stakeholder training, and the development of ongoing reporting structures to give leadership the visibility they needed.

The Results

• $300,000 in annual cost reduction achieved
• $3M annual IP budget brought under management and control for the first time
• $6,000 – $10,000 per case reduction in EPO filing costs
• Budget aligned with forecasts for the first time in seven years
• Multi-million dollar infringement threat successfully neutralised
• 3-year budget forecasting process designed and implemented
• Modern IP asset management system deployed with full data integration
• Business-aligned IP strategy developed and embedded across the organisation

Beyond the financial outcomes, this engagement transformed how the business thought about IP. The function moved from a cost centre with no strategic voice to an active contributor to competitive advantage, with the systems, processes, and leadership credibility to sustain that position.

The Challenge

Our client was entering one of the most competitive periods in its history. A major global food and beverage manufacturer with over $10 billion in annual revenue, the company was simultaneously creating entirely new product categories, expanding aggressively into emerging markets, and facing an intensifying IP arms race from well-resourced competitors.

Despite the stakes, the organisation had no systematic competitive intelligence function. Teams were reacting to competitor moves rather than anticipating them, and a persistent divide between R&D and Commercial meant that intelligence, when it did exist, rarely reached the people who needed it most.

The specific problems we were asked to solve:

• No systematic competitor monitoring process
• No structured mechanism for converting raw IP data into strategic insight
• Persistent R&D and Commercial knowledge gaps with each function operating in isolation
• Reactive posture: responding to competitor moves after they happened, not before
• No dedicated resource for evaluating the strategic significance of competitor IP activity

Our Approach

We designed and built a competitive intelligence function from the ground up, combining technology infrastructure, analytical frameworks, and human expertise in a way that could be sustained and scaled over time.

Phase 1 – Discovery & Alignment

We began with a deep-dive analysis of the client’s business strategy, category dynamics, and competitive landscape, combined with extensive stakeholder interviews across R&D, Commercial, Marketing, and Legal. This gave us a precise picture of the intelligence requirements that mattered most to the business.

Phase 2 – Human-Centered Design

We applied design thinking principles to ensure the intelligence outputs we built were ones that people would actually use. Too many competitive intelligence programmes fail not because the data is poor, but because the outputs are not designed for the people receiving them. We fixed that from the outset.

Phase 3 – Knowledge Ecosystem Audit

We audited all existing internal information sources, tools, and capabilities to identify what was already available and what needed to be built. This ensured we weren’t duplicating effort and that new infrastructure integrated cleanly with existing systems.

Phase 4 – Intelligence Infrastructure

We established a comprehensive IP monitoring system with automated alerts for key competitors, technologies, and market developments. At the centre of this was our proprietary ‘Anticipate the Competitor’ framework, a structured process that converts raw IP and market signals into clear strategic recommendations, always delivered with a ‘So what? Now what?’ conclusion.

The Results

• Competitor A: Predicted a major system launch 6 months in advance, giving the client time to develop and execute a response strategy
• Competitor B: Anticipated geographic expansion strategy before public announcement
• Competitor C: Forecasted a competing product feature introduction with sufficient lead time to respond
• R&D – Commercial alignment: Eliminated the long-standing knowledge gap between functions
• Monthly expert review process established for ongoing IP significance assessment
• Custom intelligence dataverse built within the client’s existing technology ecosystem
• Reduced overall cost of competitive intelligence relative to previous ad hoc approach