This week, Fortune Magazine has a story on Bill Campbell (aka “the coach”), a former Columbia University football coach who now advises both Silicon Valley IT startups and big technology companies such as Google and Apple.

The article describes Campbell’s evolution from a football coach who, for reasons that were mostly beyond his control, never achieved quite as much success as he wanted to “

[a] guru to Apple and Google” and “the most confidential advisor in Silicon Valley.”  It’s a fascinating read in and of itself.

(As an aside, I’ve always admired Americans’ capacity to reinvent themselves, and the willingness of American society to give people a chance to try something new, to take a second shot at success.)   

But the article also contains a great story on the importance of intellectual property (IP).

In the 1990s, Campbell joined the board of a start-up called Opsware which focused on selling software to help run corporate data centers.  Campbell attended Opsware’s weekly engineering meetings, making everyone working on product development understand, according to Opsware’s co-founders Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen, how important they were for the company.

Horowitz also recalls that Campbell argued vehemently for keeping Opsware’s software-development business going as rivals closed theirs down during the dot-com crunch – and as his investors pressured him to sell it. 

"The venture capitalists were all saying, ‘Get rid of your intellectual property,’ Horowitz tells Fortune.  “We couldn’t afford it, but Campbell said, ‘If you don’t have IP, you don’t have anything.’”

The coach was right.  In the end, it was the software business that saved the company.   Opsware was sold to Hewlett-Packard in 2007 for $1.6 billion.

To help entrepreneurs understand the importance of IP and learn how to protect it, ACT has been hosting seminars all over the United States and Europe entitled “Turning Your Innovations into a Successful Business.”

We’ve also founded the Innovators Network, where company founders can talk to other entrepreneurs with varying degrees of experience and to business consultants, IP lawyers, and venture capitalists about, among other things, how to monetize their intellectual property.

So, if you’re in it to win it, check out and our events and our IN website – and, above all, make sure you protect your intellectual property!