Dear Readers, Strategists and Game-Changers,
Hope you are doing great!
Last week, I walked through two extraordinary windows into the future.
First, France Quantum , where scientists, founders, investors, industrial leaders and public institutions gathered around technologies capable of reshaping computation, communication, sensing, security and scientific discovery.
Then, VivaTech , where artificial intelligence, robotics, space technologies, biotechnology, climate innovation and technological sovereignty converged at an almost dizzying scale.
Different events. Different technologies. Different levels of maturity.
Yet, across dozens and dozens of discussions, I encountered the same strategic contradiction again and again.
The companies I met are creating value through knowledge, inventions, data, software, algorithms, scientific expertise, experimental results, proprietary processes, brands, ecosystems, relationships and human creativity.
Based on my field observations and discussions, I estimate that between 70% and 95% of the value of many of these companies depends on their intangible assets.
And yet, almost none of them has an executive responsible for managing those assets as a coherent strategic system.
No Chief Intellectual Property Officer. No Chief Intangible Assets Officer.
Some have an IP manager. Some work with an excellent patent attorney or intellectual property firm. Others have legal counsel, innovation managers, data officers or technology directors covering parts of the equation.
These professionals are essential. But fragmented responsibility is not executive ownership.
And having someone administer a patent portfolio is not the same as having someone accountable for the assets upon which nearly the entire value of the company depends.
This is not a minor organisational omission. It is one of the greatest governance gaps in today’s knowledge economy.
Imagine managing finance without a CFO
A company would never say:
“We do not need a Chief Financial Officer. We already have an accountant.”
The accountant is essential. But the CFO performs a fundamentally different function.
The CFO does not merely produce financial statements or ensure tax compliance. The CFO connects cash flow, capital allocation, investment, financing, risk, performance, governance and long-term corporate strategy.
The same distinction must be understood in intellectual property.
A patent attorney can draft and prosecute a patent application. An IP firm can provide excellent legal advice and representation. An IP manager can administer a portfolio, monitor deadlines and coordinate procedures.
But the Chief Intellectual Property Officer determines why an asset should be protected, how that protection supports the business model, which technologies and markets matter, how resources should be allocated and how the IP portfolio contributes to competitive positioning, financing, partnerships and growth.
The Chief Intangible Assets Officer goes even further.
The CIAO connects intellectual property with the complete invisible architecture of the company:
- data;
- software;
- algorithms;
- technical and scientific know-how;
- trade secrets;
- human capital;
- organisational knowledge;
- brands and reputation;
- customer and partner relationships;
- contractual rights;
- technological dependencies;
- regulatory expertise;
- and the organisation’s capacity to innovate repeatedly.
This is not simply another legal or administrative role.
It is an executive value-management function.
If a company would not leave its finances without a CFO, why would it leave 70% to 95% of its value without an executive owner?
The battlefield has moved beyond patents
For decades, the dominant model appeared relatively straightforward:
Develop a technology. File a patent. Build a product. Enter the market.
That model is no longer sufficient.
Today, a single deep-tech product may depend on hundreds of interconnected intangible assets.
A quantum company, for example, may hold strategically important knowledge across:
- qubit architecture;
- materials and fabrication;
- cryogenic engineering;
- control electronics;
- calibration procedures;
- error-correction methods;
- software interfaces;
- algorithms;
- simulation tools;
- experimental datasets;
- performance benchmarks;
- manufacturing relationships;
- academic collaborations;
- employee expertise;
- and access to critical infrastructure.
The patent portfolio matters. But it represents only one layer of the system.
A company may own strong patents and still lose control of its value through poorly structured collaborations, undocumented know-how, uncontrolled access to data, inappropriate open-source use, weak confidentiality measures, employee departures or ambiguous ownership provisions.
Conversely, a company may decide not to patent a critical process and still protect it effectively through a properly designed and implemented trade-secret strategy.
The question is therefore no longer simply:
“Do we have patents?”
The real questions are:
What creates our advantage?
Which intangible assets support that advantage?
Who owns and controls those assets?
How durable is that control?
What could cause value leakage?
How do these assets support our product roadmap, industrialisation, financing and long-term mission?
These are not filing questions. They are C-suite questions.
Qolumbus: innovation through intelligent hybridisation
One of the most compelling technological approaches I encountered around France Quantum was that of Qolumbus .
Its architecture brings together superconducting qubits and semiconductor spin technologies—not as a superficial combination of two technological platforms, but as an ambitious attempt to mobilise their complementary strengths within a coherent hybrid system.
This approach reflects a sophisticated industrial vision.
Rather than assuming that the future of quantum computing will be won by a single technological modality, Qolumbus is exploring how different qubit technologies may be orchestrated to overcome their respective limitations and unlock new possibilities.
That is precisely where the quantum industry is heading. The future will not be defined by an isolated processor.
It will emerge from the integration of quantum hardware, classical high-performance computing, control systems, software layers, algorithms, experimental data and increasingly complex industrial ecosystems.
Quantum is therefore no longer only a physics problem. It is becoming a system-design, integration and orchestration challenge.
Qolumbus provides an elegant illustration of this transition.
And the more ambitious such an architecture becomes, the richer its intangible-asset system becomes as well: technical know-how, interfaces, calibration methods, experimental results, architectural choices, software, collaborations and human expertise all contribute to the company’s strategic differentiation.
This naturally raises the questions that every ambitious hybrid quantum company must address as it scales:
- Which elements should be patented?
- Which knowledge should remain confidential?
- How should jointly developed improvements be governed?
- How can freedom of action be preserved across technological and academic collaborations?
- How can the full architecture—not merely its individual components—be transformed into a durable competitive advantage?
These are not indications of weakness. They are the strategic questions created by technological ambition.
When supported by coherent intangible-asset governance, the type of hybridisation pursued by Qolumbus can become more than a technological breakthrough. It can become a powerful, defensible and enduring industrial position.
Interstellar Lab: when poetry becomes strategic power
At VivaTech, Interstellar Lab offered another remarkable illustration of what innovation can become when scientific ambition, technological excellence and human imagination are brought together around a meaningful mission.
Through Mission Little Prince, the company connects space exploration, biological systems, advanced cultivation technologies and the poetic legacy of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
The ambition to make the Little Prince’s rose multiplanetary is not merely a beautiful communication concept.
It expresses something much deeper. It connects science with imagination. Engineering with emotion. Technological achievement with humanity’s long-term future.
Interstellar Lab demonstrates that a deep-tech company can create value not only through the performance of its technologies, but through its ability to build a coherent ecosystem around a mission.
Its value resides in scientific expertise, biological knowledge, cultivation technologies, experimental data, intellectual property, partnerships, reputation, narrative strength and its capacity to attract people who want to contribute to something larger than a conventional product.
These assets reinforce one another.
- Scientific achievements strengthen credibility.
- Credibility attracts partners.
- Partnerships generate knowledge.
- Knowledge produces new technologies.
- Technologies create intellectual property and proprietary know-how.
- The mission strengthens the brand.
- The brand attracts talent, capital and new opportunities.
This is not simply a portfolio of separate assets. It is a living intangible-value ecosystem.
Interstellar Lab is therefore a powerful example of a company whose technological architecture and human mission cannot—and should not—be separated.
Its story reminds us that the strongest innovations do more than solve technical problems. They create meaning. They mobilise people. They help us imagine a future worth building.
And at the centre of that process remains the most important source of value of all: the human mind.
Sovereignty is ultimately about control
Another powerful theme running through France Quantum and VivaTech was technological sovereignty.
Europe is increasingly asking how it can preserve control over critical artificial intelligence, cloud, semiconductor, quantum and digital infrastructures.
This conversation is often framed in terms of servers, chips, computing capacity and industrial facilities.
These are essential. But sovereignty is not achieved merely by owning hardware.
A company—or a country—can possess physical infrastructure while remaining dependent on foreign software, external datasets, third-party intellectual property, proprietary interfaces, inaccessible know-how or strategically fragile supply chains.
Sovereignty is therefore also about controlling intangible assets.
- Who owns the algorithms?
- Who controls the data?
- Who can modify the software?
- Who understands the manufacturing process?
- Who owns future improvements?
- Who can terminate access?
- Who possesses the tacit knowledge required to maintain the system?
- Who defines the standards?
- Who controls the interfaces through which the ecosystem must pass?
The strategic battle is shifting from the possession of technology to the structured control of the assets that make technology useful, scalable, resilient and defensible.
For deep-tech companies, intangible-asset strategy is therefore not an administrative support function.
It is part of technological sovereignty itself.
Investors are still assessing tomorrow’s companies with yesterday’s instruments
The same governance gap appears in investment.
Too many investors continue to assess innovative companies using methods inherited from an industrial economy dominated by factories, machinery, inventory and physical infrastructure.
They review revenue. Costs. Cash flow. Market size. Growth projections. And, when dealing with technology companies, the existence of patents.
These elements remain important. But they do not reveal the full value—or the full risk—of a knowledge-based company.
A list of patents is not an intangible-assets assessment. Counting patent families does not tell an investor whether those patents protect the commercial differentiator.
It does not show whether the company owns its software.
It does not reveal whether essential know-how exists only in the head of one engineer or founder.
It does not determine whether strategically important datasets can legally be used, transferred or commercialised.
It does not expose dependencies on open-source licences, universities, suppliers, founders or strategic partners.
It does not establish whether confidential information legally qualifies as a trade secret.
It does not show whether the company’s intangible-asset portfolio supports its future roadmap—or merely documents its past research.
And it does not explain whether the organisation can repeatedly transform human intelligence into protected, controlled and monetisable value.
The consequence is predictable.
Some companies are undervalued because their most powerful assets remain invisible.
Others are overvalued because apparently impressive technologies rest on fragile ownership, uncontrolled knowledge, weak governance or misunderstood dependencies.
In both cases, the investor misprices reality.
In some cases, investors are still assessing companies as they would have done 30 years ago—while the nature of corporate value has fundamentally changed.
This is why traditional IP due diligence is no longer sufficient. Investors increasingly need Intangible Assets Due Diligence.
They must examine not only registered intellectual property rights, but also the company’s knowledge systems, data, software, human dependencies, organisational capabilities, contracts, collaborations, reputation, trade secrets and ability to preserve strategic control.
The true risk may not be the absence of a patent. It may be the absence of ownership, governance, traceability or control over the invisible assets on which the company depends.
Five actions every deep-tech board should take now
1. Map the complete intangible-asset system
Do not begin with the patent list. Begin with the business.
Identify what creates customer value, technological differentiation, market access and the ability to scale.
Then map the patents, know-how, data, software, brands, people, relationships, contracts and organisational capabilities supporting those advantages.
2. Assign executive ownership
Someone must be accountable at executive level.
Not merely for filing patents, but for aligning intangible assets with business strategy, financing, partnerships, product development and long-term value creation.
For many startups and scale-ups, a fractional CIPO or CIAO provides this capability without the immediate cost of recruiting another full-time executive.
3. Establish a patent–secret–publication–open-source decision process
Every strategically relevant innovation should pass through a structured decision framework.
Should it be patented? Protected as a trade secret? Published defensively? Shared under controlled contractual conditions? Integrated into an open-source strategy?
The decision must consider detectability, enforceability, lifecycle, competitive importance, cost, geographic markets, interoperability and business objectives.
4. Audit ownership, dependencies and knowledge concentration
Review employment agreements, founder contributions, academic collaborations, joint-development projects, software licences, data rights, supplier relationships and access controls.
A company does not control an asset merely because it currently uses it.
And knowledge is not secure merely because employees have signed an NDA.
5. Integrate intangible assets into board and investor reporting
Boards routinely track revenue, runway, sales pipelines, product development and hiring.
They should also monitor strategic-asset creation, ownership, leakage risks, portfolio alignment, freedom to operate, knowledge concentration, trade-secret governance and protection of critical know-how.
What the board does not see, it cannot supervise. What the company does not measure, it rarely manages.
The missing executive: the Chief Intangible Assets Officer
The knowledge economy requires a new executive function. A function capable of connecting legal rights, technology, human capital, business strategy, risk, data, governance, financing and long-term value creation.
That function is the Chief Intangible Assets Officer.
The CIAO is not a renamed patent manager.
The CIAO is not a valuation consultant who intervenes once every few years.
The CIAO is not simply another external adviser delivering a report.
The CIAO is the executive responsible for ensuring that the company understands, controls, develops, protects and leverages the full system of intangible assets upon which its value depends.
The role is transversal by nature.
It connects the laboratory with the boardroom.
The inventor with the investor.
The product roadmap with the protection strategy.
The human mind with the assets it creates.
The present business model with the future architecture of value.
Yet very few companies have created this function internally.
And most innovative companies need this level of leadership long before they can justify recruiting a full-time CIAO.
This is precisely where the fractional model becomes strategically powerful.
DELSOL Group: pioneering the fractional CIAO model
To the best of our knowledge, DELSOL Group is the only company worldwide providing a dedicated fractional Chief Intangible Assets Officer function to external organisations.
This distinction matters. Many firms offer patent services. Others provide intellectual property consulting, intangible-asset valuation or innovation advisory. Some professionals may start acting as fractional CIPOs.
But the DELSOL Group model is different.
We provide an embedded executive function responsible for the complete intangible-asset system.
Our role is not limited to advising. We help define and implement strategy.
We identify the assets supporting the company’s competitive advantage.
We structure the governance of patents, trade secrets, data, software, know-how, human capital, relationships and organisational knowledge.
We align protection decisions with technological and commercial roadmaps.
We coordinate worldwide patent firms, legal counsel, technical teams, investors, public institutions and specialised partners.
We help boards understand where value is being created, where it may be leaking and how it can be transformed into sustainable competitive power.
This model combines two complementary executive functions:
- the fractional Chief Intellectual Property Officer, focused on the strategic management of intellectual property;
- and the fractional Chief Intangible Assets Officer, responsible for the broader ecosystem of invisible value.
The external patent attorney remains essential. The law firm remains essential. The valuation expert remains essential. Just as the accountant remains essential to the CFO.
But none of these external specialists replaces the executive who understands the organisation from within and orchestrates the different contributors around a coherent strategy.
DELSOL Group works particularly with deep-tech companies and organisations pursuing meaningful real-world impact.
Not simply to protect what they have already created. But to help them decide what to create next.
What to control. What to share. What to keep secret. What to patent. What to measure. What to transform into strategic assets.
And how to ensure that innovation remains aligned with long-term human progress.
The next competitive advantage will be orchestration
France Quantum and VivaTech demonstrated that Europe does not lack ideas.
It does not lack scientific talent. It does not lack ambitious founders.
And it certainly does not lack technologies capable of transforming the world.
The deeper challenge is converting those capabilities into durable strategic power.
The winners of the next decade will not necessarily be the companies with the greatest number of patents, the largest datasets or the most impressive technological demonstrations.
They will be the companies capable of orchestrating patents, secrets, software, data, human intelligence, partnerships, brands and organisational knowledge as one coherent system.
Because a breakthrough is not yet an asset. An invention is not yet an advantage. And knowledge does not automatically become value.
Value emerges when knowledge is identified, structured, controlled, protected, connected to a purpose and placed in the service of a long-term strategy.
In the industrial economy, leadership meant controlling factories and machines.
In the knowledge economy, leadership means controlling the invisible architecture behind innovation.
If 70% to 95% of your company’s value is intangible, the question is no longer whether these assets deserve executive leadership.
The real question is:
How much value—and how much control—are you willing to risk before appointing someone to lead them?
Because the future of business will not be won only through technology.
It will be won through the intelligent orchestration of human minds, strategic assets and meaningful missions.
And everything begins with the human mind.
