I beg readers of this blogs’ indulgence by introducing another post with these familiar refrains…

• ‘it is an economic fact that 80+% of most company’s value, sources of revenue, competitiveness, and sustainability lie in – evolve directly from intangible assets,
• therefore, reasonable people can conclude, businesses are becoming consistently and substantially more intangible asset intensive and dependent’.

It is the intangible asset sides of business which far too many…management teams still choose to remain operationally unfamiliar, and perhaps worse, silent about how intangibles’ play contributory roles to business value, competitiveness, innovation, sustainability, and sources of revenue,

Again, I find management teams frequently conceive…of their businesses intangibles as constants, or, mere ‘snap-shots-in-time’ and thus rationalizing foregoing or behaving dismissively toward intangible assets in general and the intangible asset side of their business, in-particular.

Business management teams, whom I assume, opt to…repetitively make compounding miscalculations in businesses execution and strategic planning regarding their intangibles, by, among other things…

• concentrating (instead) on their closest vertical (sector) competitor(s), and
• assume the sector, as-a-whole, will remain fixed – constant, to be sorted out at some future point.

But the ‘business side of intangible assets’, i.e…intellectual, structural, and relationship capital, etc., moves on and progresses, often at keystroke speed regardless, in no small part because intangibles are dynamic and fluctuate, seldom, if ever, static, that is unless business leadership permits them to be so.

For example, as David Ignatius (Washington Post, International Affair columnist) writes…(November 12, 2018) erratic changes in one country produce reactions in other countries. Alliances that once seemed solid become weaker and are recast; ambitious powers exploit new opportunities created by shifting dynamics; some countries rise, and others fall. Very similar circumstances occur with respect to businesses intangible assets.

Another example Ignatius describes in the same column…are the recent (so-called yellow jacket) protests in Paris, which Ignatius notes, represent a very dramatic demonstration that “other things being equal” are no longer safe assumptions.

The world, through Ignatius’ lens, and countless others…is moving to adapt to the reality that Donald Trump is president of the United States. Many long held – conventional friends and allies of the U.S., hope his election eventually will be reversed by inferring the United States has turned that corner ala the outcomes of the 2018 midterm elections.

However, U.S.’s friends and allies are well advised to…not count on it occurring, so these countries sense the prudence of considering that the United States may be a different country from what they had previously believed.

The salient point being…business management teams who, irrespective of their rationale, elect to remain operational unfamiliar, dismissive, and/or retreat from their fiduciary responsibilities to engage, safeguard, and exploit their intangible assets, ala a refusal to participate, are effectively providing – handing lucrative opportunities for sector competitors to come forward.

Michael D. Moberly December 12, 2018 St. Louis [email protected] ‘The Intangible Asset Blog’ since May 2006 ‘where one’s attention span, intangible assets, and solutions converge’ https://kpstrat.com/blog

Readers are invited to explore 500+ other blog posts, papers, and books I have published at https://kpstrat.com/blog