Intangible assets, such as patents and copyrights, represent approximately 80 percent of the value of the companies that make up the Standard & Poors 500 stock index. Plants and equipment and other hard assets comprise only 20%. And that's why our next guest says that successful companies often outperform their competition when they are innovating through the creation and protection of this intellectual property.
Mike Switzer interviews Dirk Brown, director of the Faber Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of South Carolina, the host organization for the international business summit on Innovation and Intellectual Property coming to Wild Dunes resort on the Isle of Palms from April 29 – May 1.
After almost 20 years, Mike Switzer retired from Wells Fargo Securities in 2001 as Senior Vice President/Investment Officer and Certified Portfolio Manager. In 1999, he and his wife, Maggie, purchased and operated for eight years the Baskin Robbins ice cream store on Forest Drive in Columbia. They grew the store from a bottom-tier operation in the Baskin Robbins franchise system to one in the top 5% nationwide within three years, tripling sales along the way. While operating the ice cream store, Mike and Maggie received patents for a portable ice cream sink and fold-down sneezeguard they invented and in 2002 started Magnolia Carts, an ice cream cart manufacturing company, which they sold in 2013.