For decades, boards of directors held to the adage, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” That standard business expression seemed cut out specifically for intellectual property and other intangible assets. For that reason, most companies have a poor track record of crafting IP strategy and managing their intellectual property assets. Boards of directors simply didn’t think of intellectual property as a business tool. Instead, it was something for the lawyers to handle.

A lot of people—too many, perhaps—learn about investing in startup companies by watching shows like Shark Tank or Entrepreneur Elevator Pitch. Sure, the investors pictured do sometimes end up offering money in return for a stake in one of the companies. And sure, some of those companies go on to experience success they might not otherwise have enjoyed. For the most part, however, these shows are a bit of fantasy created and played out on television for the sake of entertainment.

As we eagerly wait for our world to return to normal, we begin to understand that the “normal” we face will not be the same as we knew it before. For as long as we can foresee, we will still need to keep distance from others (Enter: Apple’s new app for distance group photos.) And we are becoming more aware of racial inequalities that exist throughout our country. (Enter: Apple and other companies halting facial recognition program sales). See what other companies are doing to move our world along.

It’s no surprise that much of the innovation making the news lately revolves around finding cures, treatments, and/or vaccines for the novel coronavirus. However, some of the IP out there is being created to help us get through our time indoors. Toy and electronic companies are still going strong and robotic deliveries are becoming even more a possibility in the near future. But the most promising patents? Artificial intelligence.

This week Amazon Books has just released “Celebrating Entrepreneurs: How MIT Nurtured Pioneering Entrepreneurs Who Built Great Companies”, by my long-time friend, colleague, and former professor (and boss!), MIT Professor Edward Roberts, who founded and still chairs the MIT entrepreneurship program. The book is available for Kindle (and other electronic downloads at $9.99) and in a beautiful colored paperback (for $50). The web site, CelebratingEntrepreneurs.com, tells much more about the author, the book itself, and provides for direct purchase from Amazon at the pre-publication and early sales discounted prices.

As our previous several articles have highlighted, there is no shortage of innovation taking place during this pandemic. Scientists the world over scramble for answers to very specific and unique pain points, which leads to solutions that might, at least for the moment, infringe upon intellectual property currently patented.

The coronavirus outbreak is the only thing on all of our minds these days. It has changed the scene of industry in so many ways: companies that thought they were car manufacturers are now building ventilators, makers of alcoholic beverages now making sanitizer, and even retired homemakers are contributing to the cause by sewing masks for hospital workers. Among all these changes, what new patents have arrived on the scene to help?

Necessity is the mother of invention, and during these trying times, necessity’s name is COVID-19. The pandemic caught most of the world by surprise, spreading and mutating before scientists could grasp the full potential of the disease and its effects. Those effects, as we’ve discovered, aren’t just physical illness and possible death, but also economic devastation.