Michael D. Moberly March 25, 2009
An important objective (outcome) to any business transaction today should always be to maximize and extract as much value as possible from the intangible assets in play and/or are part of a deal. And, because increasingly larger percentages of a transaction’s (company’s) value is rooted in intangible assets, familiarity with, and consistent stewardship, oversight, and management of intangibles should be a key driver because:
1. There is no other time in the history of company governance when ensuring control, use, ownership, and value of intangible assets and mitigating the attendant (asymmetric) risks is a more direct contributor to achieving and sustaining growth, profitability, competitive advantages, and sustainability…
2. In today’s go hard, go fast, go global business (transaction) environment, (a.) slight advances in technology, (b.) minor improvements in production, and/or (c.) small refinements in business processes (each of which constitute intangible assets) can produce substantial competitive advantages…
3. The time frames (space) when the most value can be extracted (realized) from a transaction’s intangible assets is shrinking, due in large part to:
a. Unlike patents, trademarks, and copyrights there are no certificates issues by the government that says these are your intangible assets and proprietary competitive advantages, rather it is solely a fiduciary responsibility of each company to identify and adopt best practices to sustain those assets’ control, use, ownership, and value…
b. Conventional forms of intellectual property, i.e., patents, copyrights, trademarks, no longer serve as stand alone deterrents to the various global entities that routinely engage in infringement, misappropriation, counterfeiting, and/or theft…
c. Intangible asset value is perishable and generally irretrievable (certainly non-renewable), that is, once an asset has been compromised, economic and competiive advantage hemorrhaging will commence immediately and globally…
d. Ultra-sophisticated, predatorial, and global data mining and business intelligence operations can instantaneously erode asset value and undermine its competitive advantages…
