Blog
IP Support for SMEs: 6 Best Practices and 1 Key Challenge
29 October 2025
In today’s innovation-driven economy, effectively leveraging intellectual property (IP) is crucial for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) to grow and thrive. Yet, many SMEs struggle to navigate and exploit the complexities of IP. Intellectual property offices offer programmes to approach and tackle this issue, and do so with different formats. Through a recent IGL collaboration with the World Intellectual Property Organisation, we sought to identify key drivers of success and areas for growth in these programmes. Our resulting study is helping participating agencies benchmark their programmes, identify new opportunities, and explore possible collaborations to tackle them.
Here are the six best practices and one challenge that have emerged:
Integrate IP with business strategy
The most impactful programmes don’t treat IP as a purely legal matter. Instead, they strategically embed IP within a company’s broader strategy through training, audits and business plans. This shift positions IP as a dynamic tool for commercialisation and growth, transforming theoretical IP knowledge into actionable steps for SMEs. This commercialisation-focused approach is paramount for driving real impact.
Facilitate access to qualified expertise
Connecting SMEs with the right experts is critical. Our findings show programmes successfully linking businesses with IP strategists, business experts, and IP lawyers who offer tailored guidance, sometimes in combination with each other, for a more well-rounded, intensive support. While methods of connecting vary – from direct matching to curated lists of recommended professionals – the consensus is that this facilitated support builds the trust needed to tackle the IP challenge, often beyond the specific support programme.
Use financial support to drive engagement, and cost-sharing to increase commitment
Financial support, making it cheaper or free to access relevant expertise, emerges as a key driver of business interest in programme participation. But we also find some indication that cost-sharing schemes increase commitment for companies to stay on and see the programme activities through.
Build strategic partnerships
Consistently, strong partnerships and collaborations emerge as vital success factors. National IP offices working with innovation funding agencies, universities, accelerators, and industry bodies expand programme reach, facilitate SME recruitment, and allow IP support to be embedded within broader business offerings. Some IPOs go as far as offering their IP programmes as add-ons or extra modules of business support programmes by other agencies instead of setting up their own recruitment.
Speak the language of SMEs
Connecting with the intended audience requires tailored strategies. This often involves leveraging partner networks and adapting communication to be relevant and accessible to SMEs, crucially avoiding excessive legal jargon that can deter engagement. Some IPOs work with regional partners who are already trusted counterparts for companies and can communicate effectively about the IP support programmes, recommending them to those with the greatest potential to benefit from them.
Commit to piloting and iteration
An iterative approach to programme development, including piloting and refining based on participant and partner feedback, is key to designing programmes that genuinely meet SME needs and capabilities. This test-and-learn approach allows for lower resource commitment at the start and scaling based on lessons learned and what works.
The challenge: measuring impact, not just outputs
Successful programmes demonstrate a strong commitment to measurement, evaluation, and feedback. They track participation, completion rates, satisfaction levels, and actions taken by SMEs. But measuring long-term business or commercial outcomes like IP registration, growth, and fundraising presents challenges; so IP offices are actively developing methodologies – often through collaboration with other government bodies – to capture these delayed impacts and ensure that companies are properly supported throughout their IP journey.
What this means
Our benchmarking study highlights that, while common elements underpin successful IP support programmes, there’s still ample room for learning and refinement. Questions around the optimal level of financial support, the most effective models for expert access, the intensity of support needed, the best outreach strategies, and methodologies for long-term outcome measurement remain open for experimentation. We believe that by embracing an iterative and evidence-based approach, and by continuing to share learnings from different programmes, we can collectively unlock the full potential of intellectual property for SME growth and innovation.
If you want to be part of these efforts, reach out to us via [email protected] .
