Alum Finds Second Life for Engineering
A deep-seated desire to maximize the value of engineers' work and a focus on partnership are two of the driving forces that have brought computer engineering alumnus Warren Savage '93 to his position as leader in the field of semiconductor intellectual property (IP) management. As founder and CEO of IPextreme, a company based in Campbell, California, with offices in Munich and Tokyo, he is passionate about liberating captive IP and enabling collaboration.
Savage began his career in the semiconductor industry more than 30 years ago, and was eventually recruited by Synopsys to manage their R&D teams in America, Asia, and Europe. It was there that he realized the major semiconductor companies he was working with were sitting on large amounts of captive IP that had the possibility of being commercially licensed. In 2004, he and a group of Synopsys veterans banded together to start IPextreme.
"It was a very radical idea at the time," Savage said. "The first challenge was convincing semiconductor companies that not all of their assets needed to be held secret; they could be exploited. With the economic downturn in 2003, companies began to see the opportunity of turning design team cost centers into profit centers. Finding a second life for technologies that had already been developed could add to the revenue stream and generate more technology. The only way to keep on a growth curve was to build on work that had already been done. IPextreme was founded to enable this; we act as an intellectual firewall between companies that want to share technology."
Fast forward to 2014 and the company is celebrating its 10th anniversary. Through their innovative IP management software, Xena™, they are able to license and distribute IP and support those products all over the world. "We found a good way to monetize and put a value on engineers’ work outside its original purpose, which creates a long tail on the technology's life. IP can have a useful life of 30 to 50 years when it is appropriately packaged and managed. When engineers' work really reaches its full potential, it doesn’t die before its time," said Savage, whose next mission is to take the democratization of IP to the next level. "We are changing the way the semiconductor industry works." Part of that change involves bringing smaller tech-focused IP companies together through the Constellations™ cooperative—teaching them how to be successful in the IP business, doing marketing shows together, and dividing costs so all can participate. "It's our way of giving back."
Learn more about award-winning IPextreme: www.ip-extreme.com