Crispin Marsh, President LES Australia and New Zealand, March 1983 Melbourne, Australia
All of us think of ourselves as being overworked and overstressed in a crazy rushing world. Licensing executives are no different. How many of us have arrived home after a trip to throw our weary bodies into an armchair and launched into a monologue to a long suffering spouse. Now how many of us have done that?
Well I'm sorry chaps but tonight I am going to blow the whistle. I am going to tell the truth of what really happens, I am going to speak on "The Licensing Executive Exposed".
Some years ago I accompanied clients on licensing negotiations in Tokyo. After a couple of days of the usual torrid negotiations the Japanese negotiators asked whether we would like to experience a piece of traditional Japanese culture. Now we immediately had ideas of a boring visit to the Tokyo historical museum or perhaps a night out at a Noh play. What our host had in mind was something quite different.
Without further ado we were whisked off to Yokohama, the port city of Tokyo. Now Yokohama has very little to recommend it except, as we were to find, the pleasures of the bath house.
We were ushered into the entrance foyer of a narrow five story building in one of those interesting Japanese back streets fragrant with the smells of barbecued eel and soy sauce wafting up from street vendors' barrows. The entrance foyer was brightly lit and had all the beauty one associates with the traditional values of Japan. The gentlemen attendants were attired in dove grey robes - bearing on their back the traditional heraldic sign, the mon. On the desk, made in the traditional Japanese cedar and backed by rice paper screens, was an Ikebana flower arrangement.
We were ushered to the first floor to quite a different environment. It was a waiting room which could well have been a mock up for a Japanese Airlines 747. Rows of reclining seats of an airline pattern; attractive girls dressed in a tailored uniform having all the clean cut smartness of a well run international airline.
While sipping our gin and tonics and awaiting our unknown fate I noticed a tall, distinguished looking European man on the other side of the room. He seemed a little ill at ease and was obviously having difficulty in communicating with his Japanese companions.
We exchanged greeting and in polite conversation he inquired as to our business in Japan. On learning of our licensing interest he became quite excited and introduced himself as Nathanial T. Parkinson. It transpired he was the brother of C. Northcote Parkinson. You have probably heard of C. Northcote Parkinson, not the little man on the tele, but the author of Parkinson's Laws. It is he who has exposed the great truths of business such as:-
Work expands to fill the time available for its completion,
and
A perfection of planned layout is achieved only by institutions on the point of collapse.
Parkinson explained the reason for his interest in us as licensing executives was that he had just completed a study of his own and wanted it to be published as Parkinson's Five Laws of Licensing. His publishing ambitions had been thwarted when his brother threatened a passing-off suit. This impediment to publication merely increased his enthusiasm for trying the laws out on us.
At this moment two attractive Japanese girls came in dressed in the same J.A.L. look alike uniforms. Parkinson and I, being closest to the door, were escorted away by these flowers of Japanese womanhood.
Now you might imagine that at this moment my mind was on things other than licensing, but not so Parkinson. Seemingly oblivious to the charms of the damsel snuggled up to his arm, he launched into his first law as we rose in the lift to the respective private bathing cubicles assigned us. He explained that the first law of licensing must be related to the evaluation of the technology. He said his research showed that the mainstay of commercial assessment, the market survey, was as reliable as a bathtub in Bass Strait.
Parkinson's first law was
"Answers given to market researchers questions will more truly reflect what the answerer thinks the questioner wants to hear than any real intentions on the part of the answerer to act in a particular way".
To drive his point home he asked whether any licensing executive would ever answer "yes" to a travel questionnaire inquiring if he had an intention to visit a bathhouse when next travelling to Japan. At that particular moment I must admit there was an irresistible logic to his argument.
By this time we had reached our respective cubicles which, it transpired, were side by side and separated only by a rice paper screen.
Now I suppose all of us when we think about it realise that bathing is normally done without clothes. I suppose subconsciously I was prepared to bath in a state of nakedness but, the delicate efficiency with which I was divested of my garments and the speed with which her rosebud qualities were revealed in their naked loveliness set my spin tingling.
I can tell you it wasn't my spin which tingled as I, as is usual in the Japanese bathing tradition, was led not to the bath but to a small three legged wooden stool where I was doused with buckets of hot water. This snow drop, this blossom petal, my companion in this adventure, turned at this point into a tigress as she scrubbed away at my body with a stiff soapy brush. Quite apart from its effect on my anatomy it quite took my breath away.
Parkinson suffered from no such effect. Seemingly oblivious of his physical environment he yelled through the rice paper screen. The second law relates to the next step in the great chain of the licensing process. My investigation of patent filings, he shouted, have revealed the following unarguable truth:
"The more widely filed are the patent applications, the less chance there is that the invention will be successfully commercialised."
Did you ever hear, he called, of the man who filed in 103 territories for his invention of a two handled teapot.
By now the abrasive ecstasy was over. The soap had been swilled off with copious quantities of hot water ladled in the traditional wooden bucket. After the basting came the broiling! With the greatest delicacy this little yellow goddess dropped me, and herself, into a steaming tub of near boiling water to relax away the tension of this hard worked licensing executive. The hectic days of negotiations were forgotten as the searing heat penetrated through my skin and muscles to enter the very marrow of my bones.
Worldly cares may have been forgotten by me but not so the zealous Parkinson. I heard a steamy bellow from across the screen. You know, he said, after the patent attorney your poor hapless innovator will meet the licensing consultant. After years of scouring the world, after a thousand interviews I have formulated Parkinson's third law of licensing which pinpoints with the highest accuracy the level of knowledge of any licensing consultant.
"The length of membership of LES, measured in years, divided by an activity quotient obtained by summing (a) the number of papers presented to the Society by the consultant (b) the number of international meetings he has attended, and (c) the number of offices he has held in the Society, is directly proportional to the practical utility of the person as a licensing consultant."
It stands to reason, he said, that those who stay home and work will know much more about licensing than those who go rabbiting around the world giving speeches, attending meetings and playing the boy president.
Japan is a land of contrasts and one's experience in the bathhouse is no different. After the abrasive scrubbing and the searing soak was to come the sensuous caresses, after the agony the ecstasy. Laid on an air mattress I was caressed by the well soaped body of my pearl of the orient. "Awao awoki" the Japanese call it. The dance of the body. It clarifies the mind, cleanses the body, rejuvenates the spirit. The mind floats in exhalation at the softest caress applied by the body of an angel.
Parkinson was down but not out! With a softness of voice which matched our surroundings, he said, you know the thing everybody concerned with licensing always wants to know is what the licence is worth. Parkinson's fourth law says it all.
"It is a statistical truth that the dollars paid for a licensing deal will always be equal to two thirds of three eighths of what the licensor hoped for in the beginning."
After being dried, powdered and pampered I lay back and contemplated life, licensing and the glossy varnish on the Chinese red ceiling of this chamber of heaven and hell, this palace of searing pain and agonising ecstasy. Banished from my mind were licensing and Parkinson's laws.
My mind was brought back with a jolt as I heard this man Parkinson taking soft farewells from the chamber next door. I suddenly realised I couldn't let the bastard get away without telling me the fifth law.
I hurried into my clothes. A farewell bow and I was chasing down the stairs to catch Parkinson before he vanished into the night. He was just leaving as I came into the entrance lobby. I called out, I guess with a degree of urgency, "what's the final law?".
He turned slowly, gave me a broad wink and said:
"The degree of pleasure you obtain from your host's entertainment is directly proportional to the difficulty of the subsequent negotiations".
How right he was!