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Marc Tobias

BGW, Switzerland

Marc Tobias is Senior Consultant at the BGW AG and has expert knowledge of innovation and IP management. At BGW AG he has conducted several IP strategy and concept development projects. Moreover, he has led innovation management projects with focus on open innovation and crowdsourcing at both MNCs and SMEs.

He holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration and will soon finish his thesis on innovative marketing and communication strategies of SMEs and “Mittelstand” companies in Emerging Markets. He has conducted several research projects for national and European organisations, e.g. European Commission, Swiss Federal Institute for Intellectual Property, German Federal Ministry for Education and Research and World Bank, e.g. he analysed the role of patents for the development of technologies. In another actual project he is developing an IPR concept and related protection strategies for actors in open innovation platforms.

Prior to working for BGW AG, he headed the department “Enterprises and International Markets” at Fraunhofer Association, the largest R&D organisation for applied research in Europe. He and his team conducted several innovation and IP management projects with focus on international topics, incl. market analyses in various kinds of industries in Europe and the rest of the world. He was invited by WIPO to participate as an expert in a target group on SME and IP management. One of his last activities at Fraunhofer was the project “Financial Market for IPRs in Europe” (European Commission), where he was involved in the acquisition and structure development of the project. At Fraunhofer, he also gained specific insights regarding the importance of IPR in the knowledge economy, especially of this R&D organisation due to the cross-institutional activities and duties of his unit. He assembled a comprehensive understanding of efficient innovation and commercialisation strategies, including IPRs of products and technologies.
In addition, he gained international experience as a management consultant in several European countries and has worked as a project leader for the UNDP in Nepal. 

Contributions

Assessing the quality of patents and large patent portfolios based on quantitative approaches – Opportunities, threats and the new St. Gallen Patent Index™ (SGPI™) as an innovative and strong approach (ICIC 2013)