The missing map: your products and assets live on separate uncharted continents

Summary

Most companies critically valuable product lines which are powered by assets they can’t name, protected (or not) by IP they can’t locate, and generating value they can’t articulate. This article examines why the product-asset link is missing in modern companies, what breaks when that connection isn't understood, and why automated discovery is the essential starting point for rebuilding it.

The core problem: Nobody planned for asset sprawl. It just happened. Legal has one system. IT has another. Marketing a third. Engineering a fourth. Patents in one database, trade secrets in another, data catalogues maintained by IT that legal doesn't know exist. Nobody can draw the line from revenue-generating product back to the IP, data, and trade secrets that power it.

The consequences: Boards govern blind to where value concentrates. Capital gets allocated without understanding which assets drive which revenue. M&A due diligence grinds to a halt. Insurance covers tangible assets whilst 90% of company value sits unprotected. Valuation articulation becomes impossible.

The solution: Comprehensive automated discovery of all intangible assets, followed by systematic mapping to products and revenue streams. The scale of modern enterprises makes manual approaches impossible - the complexity exceeds human capacity to track and maintain.

Radio Silence

A multinational tech company with hundreds of software modules, proprietary datasets, registered trademarks, and a patent portfolio faces a board question: “What assets actually power our core revenue streams and are they protected?”

The silence is telling. Patents live in one system. Trade secrets in another. Data assets tracked by IT. Brand equity monitored by marketing. Code repositories managed by engineering. The connections between exist only in theory.

Nobody can draw the line from product to asset. Not because the assets don’t exist, but because the map was never built.

The proliferation problem

Nobody planned for asset sprawl. It just happened. Legal has one system. IT has another. Marketing a third. Engineering a fourth.

Trade secret documentation scattered across legal, R&D, and operations. Multiple patent filing systems (often from different acquisitions). Separate trademark databases across jurisdictions. Data catalogues maintained by IT that legal doesn’t know exist. Code repositories managed by engineering. Copyright registers that nobody’s touched since 2018.

Asset archipelago. Your IP portfolio exists. Your products exist. But the connection between them lives in someone’s head. Maybe.

What’s actually missing - the product-asset link

The questions enterprises can’t answer:

• Which IP protects our SaaS platform? → “We’ll need to do a mapping exercise”
• If we sunset this product line, which IP becomes non-core? → “Let me get back to you”
• Which trade secrets underpin our pricing advantage in the EMEA market? → “That’s not documented”
• What data assets drive our recommendation engine? → “IT knows, legal doesn’t”

This matters because boards can’t govern blind, capital gets misallocated, IP strategy stays generic, risk assessment becomes guesswork, M&A due diligence collapses, and valuation articulation fails.

What breaks when the link is missing

The governance failure

Boards ask “what are our most valuable assets?” Finance answers with balance sheet numbers. But those numbers aren’t linked to the revenue-generating products. Directors can’t exercise proper oversight over assets they can’t map to business outcomes.

You’re governing blind when you don’t know which IP protects which product, which trade secrets drive which margin, or which data assets power which revenue stream. The board’s fiduciary duty becomes theoretical and arguably unmet.

The capital allocation problem

How do you decide where to invest R&D spend when you don’t know which assets drive which revenue? Product teams request budget for “innovation” but can’t articulate which existing IP advantages they’re building on.

Resources get spread thin rather than concentrated where actual value is generated. You’re optimising for activity, not outcomes. The finance team allocates capital based on headcount and historical spend, not asset leverage.

A European enterprise spent £8m developing a new product feature that duplicated capabilities already covered by existing IP. Nobody knew the assets existed because they lived in a different system, acquired three years earlier. That’s not poor planning - it’s the inevitable consequence of disconnected systems.

The strategic blind spot

Product teams can’t make IP-informed decisions because they don’t know what they have. R&D duplicates work already covered by existing patents. New products launch without anyone checking if underlying trade secrets are properly protected.

Your commercial strategy and your asset strategy exist in parallel universes. Product roadmaps get built without reference to IP advantages. Go-to-market plans ignore defensibility gaps. You’re competing on execution alone whilst competitors leverage their full asset base.

The insurance gap

Your insurance covers your tangible assets, but that’s 10% of company value. You haven’t insured the IP that represents the other 90%. Most companies don’t have IP insurance at all. See our Intanify Insight on this - Insuring invisible value (and not just the furniture) and our interview with Kim Cauthorn at WTW.

When coverage exists, it’s generic. Which patents? The ones related to Product A that’s being sunset, or Product B that’s generating 80% of revenue? Without the product-asset link, you can’t optimise coverage for actual value concentration.

One multinational discovered after a trade secret theft that their insurance covered patents but not the proprietary methodologies that actually drove competitive advantage. The theft cost £12m. The insurance paid nothing. The board hadn’t known which assets needed protection because nobody had mapped them to revenue streams.

The valuation penalty

You can’t credibly articulate value you can’t map. When acquirers ask “what IP drives your enterprise sales?” and you can’t answer precisely, they discount. When you claim “proprietary technology” but can’t specify which assets protect which products, buyers assume it’s marketing speak.

Due diligence that should take 8 weeks takes 6 months. Buyers lose confidence. Deal heat evaporates. Why? Because you’re assembling the product-IP map for the first time under time pressure, and every delay signals risk.

The companies commanding premium multiples aren’t necessarily the ones with the best IP - they’re the ones who can articulate exactly how their IP drives business outcomes. That articulation requires the map.

Why discovery is the starting place - and why it requires automation

You can’t link what you haven’t found. Before you can connect products to assets, you need to know what assets you have. Not just registered IP (patents, trademarks), but trade secrets embedded in processes, proprietary datasets, custom code and algorithms, know-how and methodologies, and customer relationships and switching costs.

The scale of modern enterprises makes manual discovery impossible. A company might have 200+ trade secrets across different business units, dozens of proprietary datasets, hundreds of thousands of lines of custom code, multiple brands and sub-brands across markets, and patents filed across jurisdictions over decades.

No single person can hold this in their mind. No manual process can keep it current as products evolve, acquisitions happen, and new IP gets created. The complexity exceeds human capacity.

A European SaaS company thought they had “about 30 assets worth tracking.” After automated discovery: 127 distinct intangible assets, including data processing methodologies, customer onboarding workflows, and proprietary integrations nobody had documented.

Only then could they systematically connect those assets to specific products and service lines. Only then could they answer board questions about which IP protected which revenue. Only then could they optimise insurance, allocate capital, and articulate value.

What the link enables

Once you can answer “which assets power which products,” everything changes.

Boards understand which assets drive which revenue. Strategic decisions get informed by asset concentration. Directors exercise oversight over something concrete rather than abstract balance sheet entries.

Capital allocation decisions get based on which assets generate most value. R&D spend concentrates where IP advantages are strongest. Resources align with actual value drivers rather than historical patterns.

Product teams know which IP advantages to leverage. R&D avoids duplicating existing capabilities. Commercial strategy builds on defensibility rather than ignoring it.

Insurance gets optimised for actual value concentration. Trade secret protection focuses on revenue-critical assets. Coverage matches risk rather than guesswork.

Buyers see precisely how IP drives business outcomes. Premium pricing gets justified with specific product-asset connections. Due diligence accelerates because the map already exists.

From chaos to clarity

The problem isn’t that these companies have bad IP management. It’s that they’ve grown through acquisition, product evolution, and technical development without anyone stopping to consolidate and connect.

The invisible link becomes visible when you discover comprehensively - automated discovery of all your assets, not just registered IP. Then map systematically - connect each asset to products and revenue streams. Then maintain actively - update as products and portfolios evolve.

Most enterprises are running multi-million pound product lines powered by assets they can’t name, protected by IP they can’t locate, and generating value they can’t articulate.

It doesn’t have to be this way.