The semiconductor IP industry, Schorn noted, has grown to over $1 billion in annual revenue with the Design and Reuse website listing over 6,500 IP components available from more than 400 suppliers. However, there is only a single vendor with double-digit market share which suggests a very young and dynamic long-tail of companies racing towards future leadership market positions.

In order to collect benefits throughout the value chain, Schorn urges to map out every significant participant in the entire value chain and understand the detailed position of each and every group.

"At the end of the day, your success will be maximized. How will you deliver value to each? Does your success increase theirs? And the top concern is how will you enable them to win against their competition?"

He continued: "This is a pen and pencil exercise. This is a relationship, a trust base role to understand what people care about. It is about the customer but it goes way further beyond that to understand each component."

Another step consists in deciding whether the companies adopts the product and/or services model. For the product model, he specified, "Engineer once and license many" is the most scalable, profitable model. However, not all IPs fit the product model 100 percent, and here intervenes the services model.

When defining a business model, Schorn said it is imperative to understand where the IP goes, what value they derive from that usage and map out users, usage scenarios for source-IP and derived-IP. Then, he continued, "map out the money flow. You are able to extract the value proposition and generate revenues."