Companies can use product and process design choices to protect innovations from intellectual property theft. By strategically adding or removing knowledge components, companies can deploy four design 'plays' ' careful coordination, tagging/cloaking, feinting/spiking, and ground staking ' to frustrate imitators. This cross-functional approach offers companies a powerful complement to traditional IP protection methods. Why would an inventor like Charles Babbage insert deliberate errors into the blueprints of the world's first computer' And why did Apple mislabel early iPhone prototypes as iPods' Actions like these may not seem intuitive but are in fact central elements in an innovation strategy that has long flown under the radar. Babbage, like many inventors since, was concerned about a rival gaining access to his blueprints and foreclosing his first-mover advantage. By adding errors to his blueprints, Babbage ensured that any competitor that obtained them would struggle to imitate...
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