African businesses and startups are coming up fast. They also want to go global. But what can African brands learn from the world’s 5 most valuable brands?

The 5 most valuable brands in the world are Apple, Google, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, and Facebook respectively, says Forbes’s 2016 ranking.

“What do these 5 most valuable brands have in common?”, I asked the participants at #TechUnravel, a just-concluded program with startups and tech entrepreneurs in Awka, Anambra State. Everyone stared at the PowerPoint slide containing Forbes’s list of the top 5 brands.

Technology? No. They share something even bigger than technology—Intellectual Property (IP).

Every successful brand doesn’t joke with IP. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, and Facebook have:

1. copyright over their knowledge system and codes for their software programs;
2. trademarks connected to their goods and services;
3. patents over inventions they own, license, and distribute;
4. design rights over the shape, size, or 3-dimensional shapes etc of the products they own or make; and
5. trade secrets for their business methods.

So what can African brands learn from the 5 most valuable brands in the world?