Bernstein is a startup offering blockchain-based IP protection solutions. After posting a project on Open Ecosystem Network, they ended up joining forces with Nokia.
Marco Barulli is the managing director and co-founder of Bernstein, a Munich-based startup. Bernstein offers blockchain solutions for securing intellectual property assets and innovation processes.
In 2017, the newly-founded Bernstein was looking for convincing partners to support them in demonstrating and communicating the value of their product. Barulli ran into Open Ecosystem Network, and he decided to introduce Bernstein’s solution to the community by building a project around it. This lead to a collaboration between Bernstein and Nokia.
Hi Marco! What is it that Bernstein does, exactly? What is your solution, who is it for and how does it work?
“We help companies to create indisputable digital trails of their innovation processes. This information can be used to reduce the risks related to all IP management activities.
“In practice, we allow companies to get blockchain certificates for any documents, or collections of documents, by just uploading them to our web app. Together, these certified documents create a record of the status of the development process at different points in time. It can also be used to prove who has had access to the documentation at each phase.
“Using blockchain makes these records unmodifiable and conclusive. Currently, our solution is deployed over the Bitcoin infrastructure, but it could work on any public blockchains.”
How an Open Ecosystem Network project led to a partnership with Nokia
Bernstein and Nokia got in touch through Open Ecosystem Network. How did that happen?
“In summer 2017, I was on the hunt for a well-known collaboration partner for the unique defensive publishing service we were currently developing at Bernstein. Defensive publishing is an intellectual property strategy used to prevent competitors from obtaining a patent for a certain idea.
“IP management is a business-critical thing for many companies, and they can have reservations about anything new in the field. Even though I knew our solution was way better than anything else on the market, I wanted a convincing partnership to gain us some credibility points in the eyes of other potential clients.
“I was thinking of big corporations, universities and the like. Then I ran into Open Ecosystem Network, and decided to submit our solution as a project on the platform. Soon after that I got a call from Nokia.”
--> Startups, established SMEs, individuals and teams can post projects on Open Ecosystem Network. That's a way to showcase ideas to potential partners and submit finished work for assessment. Read more
What happened then? How has Bernstein benefited from the project you posted on Open Ecosystem Network?
“Nokia liked our decentralized approach to defensive publishing, so we were also given the opportunity to present our solutions for securing trade secrets and fostering open innovation.
“In the end, Nokia became our customer. We’ve been working together on protecting Nokia's Factory in a Box vision, for example.
“This collaboration has given us the chance to truly demonstrate the validity of our solution. We now have real proof points that we can use to engage more customers and to strengthen our partnership with Nokia.”
Bernstein’s blockchain-based IP protection to become available for Open Ecosystem Network members
Bernstein’s solution is very closely linked to the concepts of open innovation and sharing of ideas, which are also what Open Ecosystem Network is all about. How can Bernstein facilitate cross-ecosystem collaboration?
“Idea-protectiveness, secrecy and the related suspicion can be significant barriers to openness and collaboration.
“Our solution gives anyone the opportunity to get undeniable proof of the moment their idea has been created and that it was in fact created by them. That should definitely alleviate some of the pains of joint development and innovation efforts.
"We are currently working with Nokia to integrate our solution to the Open Ecosystem Network platform. This will give users the opportunity to benefit from our blockchain-based IP protection, which should make them feel even more secure about sharing their ideas.”
Marco Barulli's advice for corporates working with startups: “You have to strive for business value to gain business value”
It’s not always easy for big corporates and startups to work together. Have you come across any complications, and how have you found your way around them?
“Big corporations are slow and stiff, that just can’t seem to be helped! Although I do have to say that our cooperation with Nokia has been a relatively smooth process.
“Startups are all about iterative workflows and agile experiments. This approach yields projects that are small in size, and small projects tend to get stuck in bigger corporations. The best way to get things moving seems to be to bump up your project until it’s big enough to get picked up by someone higher up in the organisation. Only then the people in the lower levels, the ones you are likely to cooperate with on a daily basis, will feel like they have a strong enough mandate to push the project forward."
Do you have any tips for larger companies on how to get the most out of collaboration with startups?
“Well, in order for any collaboration to be valuable, it should be tied to the actual business and mission of both companies. Especially startups that work with buzzword technologies – like Bernstein with blockchain – can come across cooperation proposals that seem to be justified by public relations value only.
“You have to strive for real business value in order to gain real business value. It’s very important to have a shared goal for whatever you’re doing together.”
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