Michael D. Moberly   March 17, 2009    (Part 2 of 5 Part Post)

When you’re up to your hips in alligators…

I seek not, in any sense, to portray this recession in a comedic context when I say, engaging decision makers now in discussions about intangible assets, is frequently interpreted as one of those ‘when you’re up to your hips in alligators you may have forgotten the original goal was to drain the pond’ situations. 

In other words, some decision makers’ are expressing less inclination (receptivity) about the management, stewardship, and oversight of the intangible assets their company has developed and/or acquired, e.g., seeking clarity for:

 1.   identifying, unraveling, assessing, and valuing their intangible assets

 2.  sustaining control, use, ownership, and value of the assets, 

 3.   leveraging and extracting value from those assets even when their company may well be

It is for that reason then, that I say, now may be the perfect time for c-suites, D&O’s, and business unit managers to seriously dig into the intangible assets their companies have produced or acquired.  Now is the time to begin to figure out how those assets can be better managed, utilized, leveraged, and positioned to extract the tremendous value they often hold to try to mitigate the adversities of the recession versus assuming a ‘fire sale’ mentality, i.e., selling those assets under highly distressed conditions at perhaps a fraction of their value, or worse, ceasing to exist because one assumed no other viable (less lethal) options were available.