Dr M's Books & Research
Two founder-facing series. One valuation methodology. One body of research.
Dr Maurice Roussety's books are not a random collection of titles. They form a connected body of work exploring one central question:
What actually creates business value?
The ThinkIP™ Series follows the founder journey from idea to wealth. The IPAPS™ Series explains how business value is measured and improved. The Research Series provides the academic foundation beneath both.
One Question Behind Every Book
Every book, framework and methodology developed by Dr M traces back to a single question:
What actually creates business value?
That question began with doctoral research into intellectual property valuation, franchise goodwill and business systems, and has since evolved into practical books, valuation tools and transformation frameworks for founders, SMEs, advisers and investors.
The Founder Journey™
Start something. Structure it. Decide deliberately. Protect what matters. Convert it to wealth.
The ThinkIP™ Series follows the natural arc of building a valuable business. It begins with a startup idea, turns day-to-day activity into structured assets, pushes toward scale, then stops at a deliberate decision gate before moving into intellectual property strategy and personal wealth creation.
The $10K Startup Playbook
Stage 1: Start Something
Question Answered
How do I turn an idea into a real business with limited capital?
The starting point for every founder. A practical guide to turning a modest idea into a real commercial opportunity without wasting time, money or momentum.
Unlock Your Hidden IP
Stage 2: Turn Activity Into Structured Assets
Question Answered
What valuable assets have I already created without realising it?
The bridge from day-to-day trading to structured asset ownership. A guide to identifying the intellectual property, know-how, systems, processes and customer assets most businesses never realise they own.
Own It
Stage 3: Push Toward Scale
Question Answered
How do I build a business that works without me and is ready to grow?
The scale preparation stage. A guide for founders who want to reduce owner dependency, build transferable systems and turn daily activity into a business that can genuinely grow.
If It Ain't Broke Don't Fix It
Stage 4: The Scale Discipline Gate
Question Answered
Does what I have built actually deserve to scale, or have I just been persuaded it needs fixing?
Before any founder is allowed to chase growth for its own sake, this book asks the harder question most growth advice never does. A deliberate decision gate that challenges founders to distinguish genuine opportunity from improvement theatre, and to protect what is already working.
Think IP
Stage 4: Identify, Protect, Value and Commercialise Your IP
Question Answered
How do I turn my intellectual property into a real, managed, commercial asset?
Only past the scale discipline gate does the series move into IP strategy. This book shows founders how to identify, create, protect, value, commercialise and manage their intellectual property as a real business asset, not just an idea.
Don't Retire Broke
Stage 5: Convert Business Success Into Personal Wealth
Question Answered
How do I turn everything I have built into the financial freedom I was promised?
The final stage of the founder journey. Business success is not the same as personal wealth. This book shows how enterprise value is converted into retirement options, exit outcomes and long-term financial security.
Guide
MVP to MDP
Stage 3: From Minimum Viable to Market Dominant Product
Question Answered
How do I build a product people actually want, not just one that works?
Having a Minimum Viable Product is no longer enough. This book shows founders how to move beyond basic functionality to create a Minimum Desirable Product with genuine market appeal, premium positioning and defensible differentiation through customer psychology, branding and IP strategy.
IPAPS™
The Intellectual Property Assets Pricing System™
The technical engine behind how business value is actually created, measured and improved.
Traditional valuation methodologies usually ask: "What is the business worth?"
IPAPS™ asks a deeper question: "Why is the business worth that amount?"
IPAPS™ (the Intellectual Property Assets Pricing System™) is a proprietary business valuation methodology developed to identify, measure and explain the hidden strategic assets that traditional valuation methods often overlook.
It examines the underlying drivers of enterprise value, including intellectual property, revenue quality, founder dependency, transferability, commercialisation, capital efficiency, governance, business systems, strategic assets, financial quality and value leakage.
The objective is not simply to calculate value. The objective is to understand what creates value.
The IPAPS™ Knowledge System
IPAPS™
Intellectual Property Assets Pricing System™
The Valuation Engine
Technical Foundation™
IPAPS™ Methodology
Plain-English Translation™
Beyond EBITDA™
Human Proof™
Owner Stories
IPAPS™ Methodology
Question Answered
How should strategic assets actually be valued?
The technical specification of the Intellectual Property Assets Pricing System™, including the valuation methodology, value drivers, adjustment engines and business valuation framework.
Audience
Valuers, accountants, advisers, academics and sophisticated business owners.
Learn About IPAPS™The IPAPS™ book series explains how business value is created, measured and improved. It moves from the plain-English translation of the methodology into short owner stories that demonstrate how IPAPS™ value drivers play out in real businesses, real decisions and real lives.
Beyond EBITDA™
Book 1: The Plain-English Translation of IPAPS™
Question Answered
Why do traditional valuation methods miss hidden business value?
A plain-English explanation of IPAPS™ and how hidden business assets, intellectual property and strategic value drivers influence enterprise value.
The Year I Stopped Being Needed™
Book 2: Founder Dependency • Transferability • Systems
Question Answered
What happens when the owner stops being the business?
A story about a founder discovering that the most valuable business is not the one that depends on him, but the one that can continue without him.
What We Owe Each Other™
Book 3: Governance • Ownership • Succession
Question Answered
What happens when value becomes emotional?
A novel about succession, fairness, and the particular damage that accumulates in families who never learn to say the hard thing out loud. The third book in the ThinkIP™ series, following Beyond EBITDA and The Year I Stopped Being Needed.
Betting On Me™
Book 4: Founder Dependency • Personal Goodwill • Transferability
Question Answered
A founder can be the reason a business succeeds and, at the same time, the reason its value cannot fully transfer to someone else.
A business novel about founder dependency, personal goodwill, intellectual property ownership and business transferability. Through the story of agency founder Nadia Hollis, Dr M explores what happens when a founder's personal brand becomes one of the business's greatest competitive advantages and simultaneously one of its greatest valuation risks. Drawing on the IPAPS™ principles from Beyond EBITDA, the book examines founder dependency, revenue quality, management capability, employee-created intellectual property, personal versus enterprise goodwill, attribution and the difficult process of converting founder-centred success into value the business can actually own, retain and transfer.
Open Shot™
Book 5: The Fourth Value Driver Cluster
Question Answered
Once the money, risk and value belong to more people than the founder alone, what makes a decision truly his to make?
A business novel about founder judgement, funding, risk, reinvestment and the changing meaning of ownership as a business grows. Written for founders, business owners, advisers and investors, it follows Connor Blake as he builds Scratch, a golf-simulator business, from one self-funded bay into a multi-site enterprise and ultimately faces a $42 million acquisition offer. Through four increasingly consequential forms of capital, his own money, his family's home, an investor's money and the accumulated value of a mature enterprise, the novel explores working capital, reinvestment, governance, hidden contributions, transferability and the boundary between a founder's authority and the rights of everyone else carrying the consequences of his decisions.
Guide
When Your AI Works for Someone Else
AI Governance • Agentic Dependency • Enterprise Value
Question Answered
If the AI relationship changed tomorrow, what capability, earnings and enterprise value would the business actually retain?
A business valuation, intellectual property, AI governance and enterprise-value guide for owners, founders, advisers, valuers and buyers. Dr M examines the emerging problem of agentic dependency: a business may reduce founder dependency, improve margins and automate critical functions while simultaneously transferring operational capability and control to AI vendors, platforms and licence agreements it does not own. Using agency theory, intellectual property analysis and the book's Agentic Dependency and Value Framework, it distinguishes AI-enabled earnings from AI-owned value.
How This Book Fits Within the IPAPS™ Series
When Your AI Works for Someone Else extends the IPAPS™ body of work into one of the most important emerging sources of intangible value—and dependency: artificial intelligence.
Beyond EBITDA provides the broader valuation foundation. It explains why business value cannot be understood from earnings alone and introduces the IPAPS™ methodology for examining the intangible assets, dependencies, risks and value drivers that determine whether earnings are durable and transferable.
When Your AI Works for Someone Else takes that principle into the AI-enabled enterprise. It asks whether AI-driven efficiencies and earnings actually belong to the business, whether the underlying capability is controlled and transferable, and what happens to value when critical functions depend on third-party AI vendors, platforms or licence arrangements.
In this sense, the books are complementary. Beyond EBITDA asks what lies behind the earnings. This book asks who owns and controls the AI capability increasingly producing those earnings.
Together, they reinforce a central IPAPS™ principle: enterprise value depends not simply on what a business earns today, but on whether the assets and capabilities producing those earnings can endure, transfer and continue creating value under new ownership.
The IPAPS™ Value Architecture
IPAPS™ is built around the principle that business value is created by more than revenue, profit and assets.
It examines the drivers that explain why one business may be worth more than another, even where their financial performance appears similar.
The Research Behind the Books
For academics, advisers, franchisors and valuation professionals.
The Research Series provides the academic and professional foundation behind the ThinkIP™ and IPAPS™ ecosystems. It includes Dr M's doctoral work and related research into intellectual property valuation, franchise systems, agency costs, risk and business value.
PhD Thesis
Intellectual Property Valuation in Franchise Systems
Audience
Academics, valuation professionals, franchise advisers
Intellectual Property Value in Franchise Businesses
Intellectual property and franchise goodwill
Audience
Franchisors, Franchisees, valuers, accountants
Agency Costs in IP Rich Businesses
Misaligned incentives and their impact on business value
Audience
Business owners, advisers, governance professionals
Risk Ecology of IP Licenses
Risk frameworks for IP licensing and franchise expansion
Audience
Franchisors, licensors, legal advisers
Two Owners, One Business
What you've built isn't yours
Audience
Franchisees, franchisors, valuers, lawyers
How the Series Connect
ThinkIP™ teaches founders how to build valuable businesses.
IPAPS™ explains why those businesses are valuable.
The Research Series provides the academic and professional foundation beneath both.
Together, they form a complete body of work around business value, intellectual property and enterprise value creation.
Central Question
What actually creates business value?
ThinkIP™ Series
Founder Journey
The wide shot: following the full business lifecycle from idea to wealth creation.
IPAPS™ Series
Valuation Journey
The close-up: how business value is created, measured and improved.
Research Series
Academic Foundation
The foundation: intellectual and academic basis behind all frameworks and tools.
Outcome
Build a More Valuable Business
The Advanced Practitioner Guide
From MVP to MDP: The A-to-Z IPA Creation Model
For advanced practitioners, advisers and professionals seeking to master the complete intellectual property asset creation, identification and commercialisation framework. From the first viable product through to market dominant product, the full methodology behind building valuable, defensible, transferable IP.
Not Sure Where to Start?
• If you are building a business, start with the ThinkIP™ Series.
• If you want to understand why businesses are valuable, start with Beyond EBITDA™.
• If you want to assess what your own business may be worth, start with the IPAPS™ Snapshot™.
• If you are an adviser, valuer or academic, explore the Research Series.