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Over the past few years one question repeatedly emerged: Who is actually responsible for managing the intangible assets that determine the value and future competitiveness of an innovative company?
The patent portfolio may be managed by a patent attorney. Contracts are generally reviewed by lawyers. Data may fall under the responsibility of the CTO or IT department. The brand belongs to marketing. Human capabilities are discussed with HR. Confidential technical knowledge remains with researchers and engineers.
But who connects all these elements? Who determines how they collectively contribute to the company’s growth, resilience, financing, competitive advantage and long-term value?
To explore this question, this edition of The Art of Strategy adopts a strategic interview format.
The questions presented here are based on recurring discussions with founders, investors, DeepTech executives, researchers and innovation leaders. The answers reflect my professional experience and strategic vision as Dr Benjamin Delsol, fractional Chief Intangible Assets Officer, European Patent Attorney, quantum physicist, IP strategist and founder of DELSOL Group.
The conversation introduces an executive role that remains unfamiliar to many companies but may soon become indispensable:
The fractional Chief Intangible Assets Officer—or fractional CIAO.
The Invisible Economy
A company may own laboratories, manufacturing equipment, computers, offices and inventory.
But these physical assets rarely explain why customers choose it, why investors finance it or why competitors struggle to reproduce what it does.
The true sources of differentiation are increasingly invisible:
- inventions;
- patents and trademarks;
- software and algorithms;
- proprietary data;
- technical know-how;
- trade secrets;
- brands and reputation;
- internal methodologies;
- organisational processes;
- commercial relationships;
- research collaborations;
- and the knowledge and capabilities of the company’s people.
According to recent estimates published by the World Intellectual Property Organization – WIPO , the worldwide value of corporate intangible assets approached USD 100 trillion in 2025.
WIPO has also reported that investment in intangible assets—including research and development, software, data, brands, design and organisational capital—has grown more than three times faster than tangible investment since 2008.
The centre of gravity of the economy has moved. Yet the governance structures of many companies have not moved with it.
The Art of Strategy: Let us begin with the most important question. What exactly is a Chief Intangible Assets Officer?
Benjamin Delsol: A Chief Intangible Assets Officer is the executive responsible for identifying, organising, protecting, managing and leveraging the intangible assets that drive a company’s competitive advantage and enterprise value.
That includes intellectual property rights such as patents, trademarks, designs and copyright—but it does not stop there. It also includes trade secrets, confidential information, technical know-how, software, algorithms, datasets, research results, brands, reputation, contractual rights, business relationships, organisational processes and critical human capabilities.
The CIAO connects these different assets with the company’s technological roadmap, commercial priorities, financing objectives and competitive environment.
The starting question is therefore not simply:
“What can we patent?”
It is:
“What creates value in this company, what could threaten that value, and how should we protect, control and leverage it?”
That is a much broader executive responsibility.
The Art of Strategy: How is that different from a Chief Intellectual Property Officer?
Benjamin Delsol: A Chief Intellectual Property Officer, or CIPO, is generally responsible for the company’s intellectual property.
Depending on the organisation, that responsibility may include patents, trademarks, designs, copyright, licensing, freedom to operate, disputes and relationships with external IP firms.
A CIAO may assume or supervise these responsibilities, but the role applies a wider strategic lens.
A patent is an intangible asset. But not every intangible asset is a patent.
The source code that has not been patented, the experimental parameters known only to three scientists, the dataset used to train an AI model, the trust established with a strategic industrial partner, the internal methodology used to accelerate product development and the ability of a particular team to solve a complex technical problem may all be extraordinarily valuable.
Nevertheless, these assets may remain outside the conventional IP portfolio.
The CIPO traditionally manages intellectual property.
The CIAO manages the broader architecture of intangible value.
This distinction does not reduce the importance of intellectual property. On the contrary, it places IP within the complete strategic system that gives it meaning.
The Art of Strategy: Are companies already managing these assets?
Benjamin Delsol: They usually manage parts of them, but rarely as a coherent portfolio.
That fragmentation is precisely the problem.
- The patents are handled by the patent firm.
- Contracts are reviewed by legal counsel.
- Software is managed by the technology team.
- Data governance may belong to IT or compliance.
- The brand belongs to marketing.
- Talent and knowledge retention belong to HR.
- Cybersecurity protects information systems.
- The CFO considers financial value.
Each function sees one part of the picture. But intangible assets do not respect departmental boundaries.
A proprietary algorithm may simultaneously involve patent law, copyright, trade secrets, data governance, cybersecurity, employment contracts, open-source licensing and commercial strategy.
A university collaboration may create new inventions, confidential know-how, joint ownership issues, publication risks and future licensing opportunities.
A single employee’s departure may create a human-capital risk, a trade-secret risk, a technical continuity risk and a competitive risk.
Someone must connect these dimensions.
That is the role of the CIAO.
The Art of Strategy: Why is the role described as “fractional”?
Benjamin Delsol: Many companies need senior leadership in this area long before they can justify employing a full-time CIAO or CIPO.
A fractional executive works with the organisation on a part-time, recurring and deeply integrated basis.
The company gains access to executive-level expertise without immediately carrying the cost and organisational burden of another permanent C-suite appointment.
But “fractional” should never be confused with superficial.
A genuine fractional CIAO is not someone who attends a workshop, produces a report and disappears.
The CIAO must understand the company’s technology, business model, competitive environment, financing strategy, partnerships and internal decision-making processes.
The individual participates in strategic discussions, helps make decisions, coordinates internal and external stakeholders, supervises implementation and monitors progress over time.
The time commitment may be fractional. The strategic responsibility is not.
The Art of Strategy: Is a fractional CIAO simply another kind of consultant?
Benjamin Delsol: No. The distinction is fundamental.
A consultant usually addresses a defined question, analyses a situation, provides recommendations and completes a project.
A fractional executive becomes part of the company’s management architecture.
The fractional CIAO does not merely recommend what should be done. The role helps establish priorities, coordinate execution, monitor results and adjust the strategy as the company evolves.
Consider the distinction between a CFO and an accounting firm.
The accounting firm may prepare accounts, provide tax advice or perform specialist financial work.
The CFO determines how financial resources should support the company’s objectives. The CFO manages risk, establishes priorities, supervises budgets and coordinates the different financial professionals.
The same logic applies to intangible assets.
Patent attorneys, lawyers, valuation experts, cybersecurity specialists and other advisers remain indispensable. They contribute specialist expertise and execute specific assignments.
The CIAO acts as the internal strategic function that connects their contributions.
The CIAO determines what should be protected, why it matters, which instrument should be used, when action should be taken, where protection is required, what the company can afford and how the decision supports the business strategy.
A strong CIAO should not displace external professionals. The CIAO should make their work more focused, more coordinated and more valuable.
The Art of Strategy: Why is this role becoming necessary now?
Benjamin Delsol: Because innovative companies increasingly derive their value from combinations of intangible assets rather than from isolated legal rights or physical property.
Consider a quantum technology company.
Its competitive advantage may depend on patented hardware, confidential fabrication processes, calibration data, control software, experimental protocols, academic collaborations and the tacit knowledge of a small group of physicists.
No single patent captures that complete value proposition.
An AI company may depend on proprietary datasets, model architecture, prompts, evaluation methods, software, fine-tuning procedures, customer feedback and agentic workflows.
A biotechnology company may combine patents, biological materials, laboratory know-how, regulatory data, clinical relationships and confidential manufacturing processes.
At the same time, innovation has become more collaborative.
Companies work with universities, contractors, accelerators, cloud providers, AI platforms, consultants, research institutions, investors and international partners.
These relationships create opportunities, but they also create interfaces through which ownership, confidentiality and control may be lost.
The more interconnected the innovation process becomes, the more important it is to have someone who understands the complete intangible-asset landscape.
The Art of Strategy: What problems do you commonly discover when you begin working with a company?
Benjamin Delsol: The first problem is rarely a complete absence of intangible assets.
The problem is that the assets have not been identified, connected or managed as a system.
A company may possess patent applications, valuable software, technical data, customer relationships and confidential know-how, but management cannot explain how these assets collectively support its competitive position.
I frequently encounter situations in which important inventions have not been formally captured.
Patent filings may be disconnected from the product and commercial roadmaps.
Confidential information may be labelled “secret” without satisfying the legal or operational requirements for trade-secret protection.
Software created by employees, founders or external contractors may not have been properly assigned.
Collaboration agreements may contain unclear ownership provisions.
Open-source components may be used without adequate governance.
Critical technical knowledge may be concentrated in one person.
Patents may be maintained at considerable expense even though they no longer support a relevant product or market.
The company may have protection in countries that are no longer commercially important while remaining exposed in its principal future markets.
Management may also be unable to explain to investors what the company genuinely owns, what it controls and what prevents competitors from reproducing its solution.
These are not merely legal issues. They affect governance, financing, valuation, operations, resilience and strategic freedom.
The Art of Strategy: You place particular emphasis on trade secrets. Why?
Benjamin Delsol: Because trade secrets are frequently misunderstood, especially in Europe.
Calling information confidential does not automatically make it a legally enforceable trade secret.
In most jurisdictions, the company must be capable of demonstrating that the information was secret, that it possessed commercial value because it was secret and that reasonable measures were taken to preserve its secrecy.
That requires more than signing a non-disclosure agreement.
The company must identify the information, classify it, control access, document protective measures, manage disclosures, train employees, supervise contractors and preserve evidence.
An NDA is an important contractual instrument. But an NDA alone is not a trade-secret strategy.
The CIAO must determine which knowledge should remain confidential, who genuinely needs access, how that access should be controlled, how long secrecy can realistically be maintained and how the chosen approach interacts with patent filings, scientific publication, employee mobility and external collaboration.
This is particularly important in DeepTech, where some of the most valuable knowledge may never appear in a patent application.
The Art of Strategy: How does a CIAO decide between patents, trade secrets, defensive publication and open source?
Benjamin Delsol: By treating them as strategic options rather than ideological choices.
Patents can provide powerful exclusion rights, but they require disclosure, investment, territorial choices and long-term prosecution.
Trade secrets can potentially remain protected indefinitely, but only while secrecy is effectively preserved. They may be inappropriate when reverse engineering is easy or independent reinvention is highly probable.
Defensive publication may prevent competitors from obtaining patents, but it also makes the disclosed knowledge available to the market.
Open source can accelerate adoption, attract developers, support ecosystem creation and influence standards. But it must be structured carefully so that the company does not unintentionally give away the layer from which it derives its differentiation.
A sophisticated company may use all these mechanisms simultaneously.
It might patent the architecture of a system, maintain its manufacturing parameters as trade secrets, protect its software through copyright, publish selected elements defensively, open-source a non-differentiating interface and use trademarks to build market recognition.
The strategic skill lies in designing the appropriate combination.
The CIAO therefore does not begin with the legal instrument. The CIAO begins with the business objective.
The Art of Strategy: What would you typically do during the first months of a fractional CIAO engagement?
Benjamin Delsol: I would normally organise the initial work around four interconnected phases.
1. Identify the assets
We map the company’s registered and unregistered intangible assets.
That includes patents, trademarks, designs, copyright, inventions, software, algorithms, data, confidential know-how, technical documentation, brands, contracts, partnerships, internal methodologies and critical human capabilities.
The purpose is not to create a theoretical inventory. It is to understand where the company’s value actually originates.
2. Connect the assets to the business
Each asset must be linked to products, services, revenue streams, customers, markets, partnerships and financing objectives.
We determine which assets support current revenue, which will support future growth and which are essential to maintaining differentiation.
An asset without business context is difficult to prioritise.
3. Assess control and exposure
We then examine ownership, access, confidentiality, freedom to operate, contractual dependencies, territorial coverage, employee and contractor arrangements, open-source exposure and knowledge-concentration risks.
This reveals both vulnerabilities and unused opportunities.
4. Build the strategic roadmap
After these previous steps and the deep analysis of the Business model and strategy of the company, we create a set of priorities, responsibilities, budgets, timelines, governance mechanisms and decision criteria, ready to be implemented by DELSOL Group within the company.
The purpose is not to deliver another static audit. The purpose is to create an operating system for intangible assets, and to implement it. We do not say what to do; we execute what must be done.
The Art of Strategy: What does the CIAO do after that initial assessment?
Benjamin Delsol: The CIAO transforms the strategy into a continuous management process.
That may involve participating in product, technology and research-roadmap meetings.
The CIAO establishes systems for capturing inventions and strategic know-how before they are lost or disclosed.
The role may supervise the patent and trademark portfolios, implement trade-secret protocols, support research collaborations, review critical agreements and coordinate patent attorneys, lawyers, cybersecurity specialists and valuation professionals.
The CIAO may also develop competitive intelligence, patent landscapes, freedom-to-operate programmes, white-space analyses and investor-facing intangible-asset narratives.
Training is another essential responsibility. Engineers, researchers, commercial teams and executives must understand how their daily decisions affect ownership, confidentiality, patentability and competitive advantage.
Finally, the CIAO monitors the strategy through meaningful indicators and adapts it as the company’s products, markets and financial resources evolve.
Intangible-asset strategy is not an annual legal exercise. It is a living management discipline.
The Art of Strategy: At what stage does a company need this function?
Benjamin Delsol: Earlier than many founders assume.
The need usually emerges when a company begins to develop differentiated technology, employ researchers or software engineers, work with external contractors, collaborate with universities, disclose information to investors or partners, build proprietary datasets or prepare its first patent filing.
The role becomes particularly important when the company is raising capital, entering international markets, preparing a licensing agreement, joining a consortium or undergoing due diligence.
Startups often believe that they should address these matters once they have become larger.
But many intangible-asset problems are created during the earliest stages.
The first collaboration agreement, the first contractor, the first public presentation, the first open-source integration and the first patent filing can have consequences that remain with the company for years.
The objective is not to create an expensive corporate bureaucracy around a young business. It is to make the right decisions at the moments when those decisions still remain reversible.
The Art of Strategy: Is this function relevant only to startups?
Benjamin Delsol: Not at all.
Startups experience the issue more visibly because a large proportion of their value is concentrated in future-oriented intangible assets.
However, established SMEs and large organisations also suffer from fragmentation.
A mature company may possess decades of technical documentation, software, brands, customer relationships, contractual rights and employee knowledge without having a consolidated governance model.
A fractional CIAO can also be relevant during a specific period of transformation.
That might include international expansion, restructuring, acquisition, preparation for sale, leadership transition, entry into a new technology sector or the creation of an internal IP department.
The fractional function can become a long-term executive role, an interim position or a bridge towards appointing a permanent internal CIAO.
The Art of Strategy: What role does the CIAO play in fundraising and investment?
Benjamin Delsol: Investors want to understand what makes the company different and whether it genuinely controls that difference.
A list of patent numbers is not enough.
The company must be able to explain which assets support each product, what prevents competitors from reproducing the solution, who owns the underlying technology, how contributions from founders, employees, contractors and universities have been secured and what freedom-to-operate risks exist.
Investors also need to understand whether the company’s intangible-assets strategy is aligned with the use of funds.
Will the next financing round expand the patent portfolio, strengthen trade-secret protection, secure strategic data, enter new markets or reduce dependence on a particular individual or partner?
A well-managed portfolio makes the company more intelligible.
It does not eliminate risk. But it demonstrates that management understands where the risk lies and has created a system to address it.
That can materially improve the quality of investor discussions and due diligence.
The Art of Strategy: Does the role also apply to investors, accelerators and family offices?
Benjamin Delsol: Absolutely.
Investors frequently evaluate financial projections, market size, team quality and technological potential.
But the analysis of intangible assets may remain limited to asking whether the company has patents.
That is insufficient.
The relevant questions include whether the company owns what it believes it owns, whether its competitive advantage can be reproduced, whether the chosen protection mechanisms are appropriate, whether key knowledge could leave with one employee and whether the portfolio supports the stated commercial strategy.
A CIAO perspective can therefore strengthen investment selection, portfolio-company support and value creation after the investment.
For accelerators and venture studios, a shared fractional CIAO function can help several companies establish strong foundations without requiring each startup to recruit a senior executive independently.
The Art of Strategy: How is artificial intelligence changing intangible-assets management?
Benjamin Delsol: Profoundly, and on various aspects.
AI creates new assets, new dependencies and new uncertainties.
Companies must consider the origin and permitted use of training data, model outputs, source code, prompts, fine-tuning datasets, embeddings, synthetic data, evaluation methodologies and agentic workflows.
They must understand whether confidential information is being entered into external AI systems and what contractual rights apply to generated outputs.
AI also changes the process of innovation itself.
When an AI system contributes to identifying a technical solution, companies must examine inventorship, traceability, ownership and the role of human decision-making.
Beyond conventional intellectual property, we are entering an era in which businesses will need to govern machine-generated knowledge and what I describe as cognitive property.
The CIAO must therefore work across intellectual property, technology strategy, data governance, cybersecurity, contracts and organisational knowledge.
The emergence of AI is one of the clearest reasons why intellectual property can no longer be managed in isolation.
The Art of Strategy: How do you measure whether a CIAO is creating value?
Benjamin Delsol: Counting patents is not the correct direction.
A company can own many patents and still have a weak strategic position.
The indicators must connect intangible assets with business outcomes and strategic control.
Depending on the company, I may examine:
- the alignment between IP and business strategy;
- the protection of critical products and markets;
- the proportion of strategic innovations formally captured;
- trade-secret identification and control;
- freedom-to-operate coverage;
- competitive white-space positioning;
- revenue exposed to insufficient protection;
- concentration of knowledge in critical individuals;
- portfolio cost compared with strategic contribution;
- licensing and partnership opportunities;
- and readiness for investment or due diligence.
These metrics are not designed to create decorative dashboards.
Their purpose is to improve decisions.
The real test is whether the company has greater freedom of action, stronger negotiating leverage, reduced exposure and better control over the assets on which its future depends.
The Art of Strategy: Is the role primarily defensive?
Benjamin Delsol: Protection is only one dimension.
A mature intangible-assets strategy should pursue three objectives.
Protection
The company must prevent the loss, leakage, imitation or misappropriation of its strategic assets.
Positioning
It should use intangible assets to create barriers, occupy valuable technological spaces, shape ecosystems, influence standards and negotiate from a position of strength.
Value creation
The portfolio should support revenue, margins, investment, licensing, partnerships, acquisitions and strategic optionality.
The best strategy is not necessarily the one that creates the largest patent portfolio.
It is the one that gives the company the greatest sustainable leverage.
The Art of Strategy: What is the most common misconception about this work?
Benjamin Delsol: That intangible-assets strategy is a legal subject to be addressed after the business strategy has already been defined.
In reality, decisions about ownership, disclosure, exclusivity, collaboration, standardisation, data access and technological differentiation directly influence the business model.
They should be considered while the strategy is being designed—not after implementation.
Intangible assets are not the paperwork produced by innovation.
They are part of the architecture of innovation.
The Art of Strategy: Your own background combines quantum physics, patent law, cognitive neurosciences, management and strategy. Why does that matter?
Benjamin Delsol: DeepTech companies operate at the intersection of several languages.
Researchers speak about scientific performance.
Engineers discuss architecture, implementation and technical limitations.
Patent attorneys analyse novelty, inventive step and legal scope.
Lawyers focus on rights, obligations and risk.
Investors think in terms of scalability, valuation and exit potential.
Business leaders consider markets, customers, partnerships and revenue.
Each perspective is valid, but none is sufficient on its own.
My role is often to translate between these different worlds and turn them into a coherent strategy.
Understanding the legal framework without understanding the technology is insufficient.
Understanding the technology without understanding how it creates business leverage is equally insufficient.
The CIAO must connect scientific, legal, financial and strategic reasoning.
The Art of Strategy: When should a company appoint a permanent, full-time CIAO?
Benjamin Delsol: When the volume, complexity and strategic importance of the work justify a permanent internal position.
A fractional CIAO can help the company reach that stage by creating the necessary governance, processes, portfolio structure, reporting mechanisms and strategic roadmap.
The future internal executive should not inherit disorder.
They should inherit a functioning system.
A successful fractional engagement should therefore make the company more mature, more autonomous and better prepared for growth.
The Art of Strategy: What should every CEO ask tomorrow morning?
Benjamin Delsol: I would suggest three questions:
What are the intangible assets upon which our future value depends?
Do we genuinely own, control and protect them?
Who is responsible for ensuring that they support our business strategy?
When the answers are unclear, the company has already identified its first intangible-assets risk.
The Invisible Balance Sheet Requires Visible Leadership
Companies appoint executives to manage finance, technology, operations, marketing, human resources and information security.
Yet the assets connecting all these functions—and increasingly determining the value of the company—often remain without an executive owner.
The fractional Chief Intangible Assets Officer addresses this governance gap.
Not by replacing patent attorneys, lawyers, technology leaders, cybersecurity specialists, financial advisers or HR professionals.
But by connecting their contributions within one strategic system.
Because an asset that has not been identified cannot be properly protected.
An asset that has not been connected to the business cannot be intelligently prioritised.
An asset that is not actively managed may never generate the value that justified creating it.
And an asset that the company does not truly control may disappear at precisely the moment when it becomes most important.
In the knowledge economy, intangible-assets leadership is no longer an administrative luxury.
It is becoming an executive necessity.
About This Strategic Conversation
This article was structured as an editorial Q&A based on recurring questions raised during conversations with founders, investors, innovation leaders, researchers and DeepTech executives.
The interview format is intended to provide a clear and practical explanation of the fractional Chief Intangible Assets Officer function. The answers reflect my professional experience and the strategic CIAO approach developed and implemented through DELSOL Group.
