It should be clear to readers that…most businesses are now variously intangible asset intensive and dependent. That is, most business value, functionality, competitiveness, revenue, reputation, and sustainability, etc., lie in – emerge directly from intangible assets which have been effectively exploited, primarily intellectual, relationship, and structural capital.
Intangible asset intensive and dependent businesses have irreversibly and probably permanently outpaced…their tangible (physical) asset dominated counterparts insofar as producers of value, revenue, competitiveness, and sustainability.
In no small part today, business intangible asset intensity and dependency has contributed to two simultaneous and parallel (business) environments…
- one, driven by hyper-competitive, higher risk, aggressive, predatorial, and winner-take-all approaches for seeking, negotiating, and executing transactions and outcomes.
- a second, driven by recognizing lower risk, niche competitive advantages, with lucrative outcomes which can accrue by departing from convention, and instead, seek, negotiate, and execute opportunities for synergistic and lucrative collaborations of project specific intangible assets which may be replicated.
In the latter circumstance, probably more so than the former… intangible assets will be recognized and put in play – exploited, i.e., bought, sold, transferred, licensed, converged, shared, and otherwise collaboratively exploited at various points during-between their development and the end-product (service, system) which they are to play a contributory role.
However, most any circumstance in which business leadership engage in a…(strategy of) collaboration, strategic alliance, partnership, and/or a multi-company consortium, in which ultra-valuable and competitive intangible assets are in play, is, in my judgment…
- hedging the transactions’ success on the assumption that it can consummate, execute, and deliver returns faster than the intangible assets in play will be variously compromised, infringed, misappropriated, and/or counterfeited.
Today, the sophistication, ‘keystroke speed’, and ‘always on’ state…which globally predatorial and legacy free economic-competitive advantage adversaries function should not be overlooked or underestimated.
In sports parlance, those who assume a strategy whereby ‘they can develop and collaborate faster than…’, appear to have accepted the perspective that ‘the best defense is a good offense’.
But, in high stakes, aggressively predatorial, winner-take-all business transaction environments occurring globally today…in which arrays of valuable – competitive intangible assets are routinely in play, such a strategy, in my view, is akin to ‘permissive neglect’. In no small part, that’s because, control, use, ownership, value and functionality of those assets are left unnecessarily vulnerable to the materialization of risk.
Any business leader’s assumption that adverse economic and competitive advantage impacts stemming from…business intelligence, data mining, and/or counterfeiting operations, can be offset or minimized by an ‘this company can develop and collaborate faster than’ strategy is respectfully operating…
- at an unnecessary level – combination of short-sightedness, wishful thinking, and absence of fiduciary responsibility!
Michael D. Moberly, April 27, 2017 St. Louis [email protected] the ‘Business Intangible Asset Blog’ since May 2006, 650+ published posts, read in 137 countries, ‘where one’s attention span, businesses intangible assets, and solutions converge’!
Readers are invited to explore more blog posts, position papers, video, and books at https://kpstrat.com/blog
Reader comments, as always are invited and respectfully welcome!
