Imagine attending an international IP conference. You meet several highly qualified professionals, exchange ideas and have a few interesting conversations. A few weeks later, someone asks you to recommend an IP expert for a particular business challenge.

Who comes to mind?

Probably someone whose expertise you associate with that particular situation. Perhaps because of an interesting perspective they shared, a relevant experience they described or the way they approached a difficult question. Their qualifications certainly matter. But among professionals with comparable credentials, other qualities often determine whom we remember and consider relevant.

In my previous columns, I explored what positioning means for expert-led businesses and why developing a meaningful position requires making conscious choices. This leads to another important question: What genuinely differentiates your expertise, and how can you identify it?

Where differentiation really comes from

Consider two patent attorneys who have similar qualifications and fifteen years of experience advising technology companies. One has spent much of that time helping research-intensive businesses translate technological developments into commercially meaningful patent portfolios. The other has developed extensive experience supporting established industrial companies navigating complex competitor landscapes. They may also differ in how they work. One might be particularly skilled at challenging technical assumptions, while another excels at bringing legal, technical and commercial stakeholders together when their priorities conflict.

Their qualifications establish comparable levels of competence. Their professional experiences and ways of approaching problems reveal potentially important differences. Throughout my work in brand and communication strategy, across industries where businesses often compete with similar capabilities and services, I have observed that meaningful differences frequently exist but remain insufficiently understood or articulated.

Businesses tend to describe what they possess or provide because those things are relatively easy to identify. The more demanding task involves understanding how they create value, what makes their contribution distinctive and under which circumstances that difference matters to customers.

For IP experts, this often means looking beyond their professional record and examining how they apply their expertise.

Look at the decisions behind your work

When developing a positioning strategy, I find it particularly revealing to examine concrete professional experiences.

What happened between the client’s initial request and the eventual outcome? Which assumptions needed to be questioned? What alternatives were considered? And what did the expert contribute that changed the client’s understanding or course of action?

The answers often reveal strengths that would never appear in a conventional professional biography.

Consider an IP advisor who describes their expertise as patent portfolio management. A closer examination of their work might reveal a particular ability to identify which patents remain commercially relevant as a company’s technological priorities evolve. Perhaps the advisor has repeatedly helped management teams distinguish between inventions worth protecting, patents worth maintaining and assets that no longer justify their costs.

Suddenly, their expertise becomes meaningful in a different way. We begin to understand how their judgment influences resource allocation and strategic decisions, potentially making them particularly relevant to companies facing changing business priorities or increasing pressure to demonstrate the commercial contribution of their IP investments. The important discovery lies in the specific contribution behind the service description. And that contribution becomes more credible when it can be recognised across several assignments, rather than being based on one isolated success.

What feels obvious to you may be valuable to others

Experienced professionals sometimes struggle to identify their most valuable strengths precisely because those strengths have become natural to them. After years of working in a particular field, recognising certain risks, asking specific questions or connecting different pieces of information may feel almost automatic. You may assume that every competent colleague would approach the situation similarly. Sometimes that assumption is correct. Sometimes it conceals an important distinction. An IP professional who has spent years working alongside R&D teams may intuitively understand how technical decisions are made inside an organisation. Another who has supported numerous corporate transactions may be particularly sensitive to how IP uncertainty influences financial negotiations.

Neither experience automatically makes an advisor better. But each may provide a valuable perspective in situations where those insights matter. In this case an external perspective can be particularly helpful. Someone with experience in positioning and business strategy can challenge familiar descriptions such as “commercially minded”, “strategic” or “client-oriented” and investigate what those qualities actually mean in practice. What does this expert consistently recognise that others might overlook? How does their involvement change the way a problem is approached? And when does that make a meaningful difference? Often, the most interesting answers emerge from experiences the expert had never considered worth mentioning.

A difference only matters when someone values it.

There is another important consideration. A professional strength becomes a meaningful differentiator when it addresses something relevant to the people you want to work with. Two companies operating in the same technological sector may require very different types of IP support. One may be building its first systematic IP strategy. Another may already have a sophisticated portfolio but struggle to connect IP investments with changing commercial priorities. For the first company, the ability to establish structures and priorities may be particularly valuable. For the second, experience in evaluating existing assets and challenging established portfolio decisions may make the greater difference.

The expertise required may overlap considerably, yet the reasons for involving a particular advisor are different. Understanding those differences helps experts recognise where their particular strengths create the greatest value. It also requires examining the alternatives available to clients. A capability may be valuable without being distinctive if most competing advisors can demonstrate it equally well. Meaningful differentiation emerges where your particular strengths, relevant client needs and the alternatives in the market intersect.

How to uncover your own differentiation

A useful starting point is to revisit three or four assignments in which you believe your contribution was particularly valuable, ideally reflecting the type of work you would like to attract in the future. Instead of concentrating on the services you delivered, reconstruct the situation.

Why did the client need support? What made the assignment challenging? Which questions did you ask? What did your experience allow you to recognise? And what changed because of your involvement?

Then look across those assignments for recurring patterns. You may discover that you consistently bring structure to situations involving conflicting stakeholder interests, anticipate commercial risks particularly early or connect technical possibilities with business priorities. These observations are valuable starting points, but they should be treated as hypotheses rather than ready-made positioning statements. They need to be tested against client perceptions, actual outcomes and the approaches of other advisors. This is precisely where strategic positioning work becomes particularly valuable. Identifying meaningful differences requires critical distance, an understanding of the market and the ability to recognise patterns that may be invisible to the experts themselves. Once those differences have been established, the next challenge is communicating them credibly.

For IP professionals, confidentiality may limit what can be shared about individual assignments. Yet it is often possible to explain recurring challenges, the reasoning behind an approach or the type of decisions that benefit from particular experience. Such examples allow prospective clients to develop an understanding of how an expert thinks and works, even before they have experienced that expertise themselves.

What should people remember about you?

The qualifications and achievements accumulated throughout a professional career deserve recognition. They demonstrate commitment, competence and experience. But as expertise grows, the most meaningful aspects of a professional’s contribution often become more complex than their credentials can express.

What distinguishes an experienced IP advisor may lie in the situations they understand particularly well, the judgment they have developed or the way they help clients navigate difficult decisions. Recognising those qualities and making them understandable to others is an essential part of developing a credible professional positioning. Because when someone encounters a challenge that requires external expertise, the most valuable question is whether they will recognise why your particular contribution could matter.

Until then, a question to reflect on:

If another IP expert had qualifications and experience similar to yours, what would clients discover was different about working with you, and how could you help them recognise that difference before choosing you?

Giulia Donato
Brand & Communication Strategy Consultant | Executive Coach | Adjunct Professor
people & brand strategies
www.donatostrategies.com