More than a quarter-century of patent leadership demonstrates IBM’s long-term commitment to a culture of scientific discovery and innovation. In 2021, there were more than 8,682 US patents, demonstrating our continuous, never-ending commitment to research and innovation. IBM is actively planting the research seeds of the bleeding edge technological world of tomorrow. IBM’s patents span artificial intelligence (AI), hybrid cloud, cyber-security, and quantum computing.
Today, more than ever, we need innovation to meet the demands of many of the major challenges of our time from models to create sustainable growth, to addressing future pandemics and climate change, to enabling energy and food security. To address them, we need faster discovery, open collaboration, efficient problem solving, and the ability to push science and business into new frontiers. This future will be powered by a blend of high-performance computing, AI, and quantum computing, all integrated through the hybrid cloud. The confluence of these technologies represents a step change in computing, and the outcomes will surpass anything we’ve seen before. Together, these advancements can exponentially alter the speed and scale at which we can uncover solutions to complex problems. We’ve come to call this accelerated discovery.
IBM’s priority has always been leading the frontiers of computing and its relationship to business, science, professions, and society. As part of the strategy, IBM is doubling down on its already robust and long-standing commitment to open communities. Innovation can emerge from anywhere, from a tech giant or a disruptive startup. In software, the growth of open source has redefined where innovation can come from, and how it is monetized. IBM has a long history in open source, and that continues today. The pioneering work in serverless computing, which is quickly becoming the leading platform for the hybrid cloud industry because of the significant growth of Red Hat, is just one example of this.
IBM will also expand its focus to grow communities of innovation. The most successful technologies and innovations are often found when complementary institutions working together where the collaborations will help technology to solve truly profound problems with partnership with other institutions adopting IBM technology. Worldwide, IBM will continue to forge partnerships with the broader scientific community to accelerate the pace of discovery.
Moving forward, IBM is also strengthening the companywide approach to focus its innovation efforts around the areas that matter most for the business and for society at large. This will include hybrid cloud, AI, quantum computing, systems and semiconductors, and security. IBM believe these areas will have the most impact on its clients, industries, and the world, with the greatest potential for ecosystem collaboration.
While IBM will remain an intellectual property powerhouse with one of the strongest US patent portfolios, as part of its heightened focus moving forward, it will also take a more selective approach to patenting. IBM is proud of its long history of topping the US patents chart, but in this new era, IBM focus will be to prioritize growing these key technology areas of the company.
The problems the world is facing today require us to work faster than ever before. IBM see it as its duty to catalyze scientific progress by taking the cutting-edge technologies they’re working on, scaling them, and deploying them with partners across every industry. Innovation is the heart and soul of IBM and serves as the engine to make its clients and the world work better. IBM made enormous strides in the last year, and will achieve more in 2022.