In a recent Yahoo! news article, "Program turns to online masses to improve patents", I learned about an interesting new patent program, called Peer-to-Patent. Its attempting to solve a major problem in the U.S. related to patents, namely the time it takes to get one, and it's applicability.

I'm no expert on Patent's but, it sounded like wikipedia for patents - great idea!

As I see everything through my PM glasses these days, the first thought that came to mind was "Peer-to-PM", the second was patenting the idea:)

Wikipedia, and this Peer-to-Patent approach, is really the way we should all be running Product Management. The approach allows us to:

- Gather mounds of market data, organized, filtered and validated by experts

- Provide a collaborative environment, and 24/7 access, to all product planning information

- Implement workflow and notifications, to make sure people are kept up-to-date of changes and processes

- Visibility, since everything is electronic, we automatically should have reporting to give us power out of all the data

So, Peer-to-Product Management, let me go write up that patent - I'll keep you posted but according to Yahoo!, I won't see anything till at least 2010!