In 2012 Visa began focusing on increasing shareholder value and embracing emerging technologies to expand its network reach. Critical to that strategic goal was a rapid expansion of its patent portfolio. At that time Visa had four main objects for its patents,
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- increase shareholder value,
- protect existing products,
- define a clear space for Visa in emerging technologies and
- provide strategic protection for the existing product portfolio.
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Ted Harris, working closely with IP, strategy, product, and technology, began a series of workshops and ideation sessions to identify emerging technologies that encroached on Visa’s traditional network or were tangent to it. From those workshops, 100s of patents and trade secrets were born. As one of Visa’s top patent receivers, Ted Harris served as an innovation resource used throughout Visa both in Product and Technology. He personally authored 54 non-provisional patents, dozens of trade secrets, and created training courses to encourage new innovators within Visa.