What Would You Do? with Maria Boicova-Wynants

“Should we protect this?” sounds like an IP question. It usually isn’t. Most of the time, it is a decision-making problem. Because when the answer is not obvious, companies tend to do one of two things. They either drift. “Let’s come back to this.” “We need more information.” “We’ll see how it develops.” Pure avoidance! Or another option: they overcompensate. They protect everything because uncert...

“Are we protected?” Is that the right question for the board to ask?  I don’t think so.  It sounds responsible, adult. It sounds like governance. And maybe… five or ten years ago, that question was enough. Legal checked the portfolio. The CFO checked the budget. And… The CEO moved on. But hey, not anymore.  IP is not just a downstream legal hygiene function. It never was, but nowadays it certainly...

"We've come too far to pivot." Few sentences have destroyed more value. It sounds reasonable. Responsible, even. Until you realise that "we've already invested so much" tells you absolutely nothing about what you should do next. Past investments are facts; future decisions are choices. Yet companies keep funding underperforming projects, renewing irrelevant IP rights, d...

Three words that have killed more strategic momentum inside companies than most competitors ever will. “Legal says no.” Usually, legal is technically right and that is precisely why this gets dangerous.  I just released a new episode of What Would You Do? on one of the most dysfunctional dynamics in business: What happens when legal advice and business strategy collide? Because most companies hand...

People built entire organizational rituals to disguise discomfort as “more analysis”, or hide the fear of making a decision by the delays to gather more data.  PowerPoints multiply, research loops continue. Another expert gets invited into the room… And nobody notices that the market kept moving while the team was busy feeling responsible. Episode 6 of What Would You Do? is about one of the most e...

Your IP portfolio might be legally strong. That does NOT mean it matters. That is probably one of the most expensive misunderstandings in business. And I see it constantly. Patents filed, trademarks registered, claims broadened, jurisdictions expanded, even reporting dashboards full of “IP strength” metrics that look reassuring in board meetings. And yet nothing changes in the market. The portfoli...

A competitor launches in your space. Same problem. Similar positioning. Overlapping features. You feel rage. Then urgency. Then you reach for the lawyers. Stop. Most of the time, what's actually happening isn't theft. It's convergent development. Or the idea wasn't as unique as it felt from inside. Both feel identical to theft under pressure. Neither calls for enforcement. Move any...

Your IP lawyer wants you to file. Sometimes that is the worst thing you can do. Not because patents are bad.  Because filing early on an unvalidated assumption builds a legal structure to defend a hypothesis the market hasn't voted on yet. Six months of work. Broad claims. Big spend. You launch. Customers want something adjacent. Now you have patents. On the wrong thing. But the reverse can li...

Your IP strategy is failing because you’re trying to answer different questions in the same room. That’s Episode 2 of WWYD - What Would You Do? So let’s have a peak into that room, shall we? CTO says trade secrets. Legal says patents. CEO says cost. And you know what’s funny? Everyone is right. And completely misaligned. This is not a knowledge gap, nor a “we need more analysis” problem. It’s a DE...

You don’t lose when your idea becomes public. You lose in the decisions that follow. Many founders think disclosure kills value. It doesn’t. Bad decisions under pressure do. Panic filing. Random pivots. Overprotecting the wrong things. Ignoring what actually creates leverage. All of it comes from one flawed assumption: “That idea was the asset.” It wasn’t. An idea going public doesn’t destroy IP....