Mary Adams's Blog (157)

Competition vs. Collaboration - A warning for us all

I heard this interview of Diane Ravitch on NPR in the car the other day about why she went from being an advocate in the Bush administration of No Child Left Behind to being a strong critic. Her logic:

"There should not be an education marketplace, there should not be competition," Ravitch says. "Schools operate fundamentally ? or should operate ? like families. The fundamental principle…

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Added by Mary Adams on March 23, 2011 at 10:43am — 3 Comments

Smart Power at Africom and Boeing, A key business model for the intangible capital economy

Today?s New York Times explains the role of the U.S. military in this week?s multilateral efforts to create a no-fly zone over Libya. The effort is led by a group called Africom that is:

the military?s first ?smart power? command. It has no assigned troops and no headquarters in Africa itself, and one of its two top deputies is a seasoned…

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Added by Mary Adams on March 22, 2011 at 9:06am — No Comments

Seeing the hidden value in companies

How's this for making intangibles tangible? This photo shows me sharing the summary graphs from two IC Value Driver Reports that we recently completed:

The photo was taken earlier this week at the Exit Planning Exchange Summit 2011. The twist was that the legend for the graphs…

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Added by Mary Adams on March 18, 2011 at 10:30am — No Comments

The future of money isn?t just about money

I really enjoyed the energy and ideas at the Future of Money & Technology Summit in San Francisco on Monday (kudos to organizer Brian Zisk!). The energy level in the room was very high. You can get a good sense of the day by reading the Twitter stream for #futureofmoney. One of my favorite Tweets, from Mickki Langston,… Continue

Added by Mary Adams on March 3, 2011 at 9:54am — No Comments

Design Constraints for a New American Economy: Why Boeing and every other company has no choice but to change

If you follow me on my blogs or on twitter, you know that I worry about jobs and the U.S. middle class. That's why it may seem contradictory to take the position I did in my recent post on Boeing.

Boeing is in the midst of a grand experiment with its 787. It has "outsourced" a greater degree of design on a scale that is unprecedented. What they have essentially done is create… Continue

Added by Mary Adams on January 13, 2011 at 12:10pm — No Comments

Is Boeing a Smarter Company (or Not)?

There have been a number of people talking again about Boeing's difficulties with the 787. Among the critics you can count ParaPundit, Michael Mandel and Dick Nolan.

In our… Continue

Added by Mary Adams on January 8, 2011 at 3:02pm — No Comments

Don't miss this discussion on Counting Intangibles

I am especially excited about the program I am leading for this month's IAFS program on "Counting Intangibles." I'll be interviewing two great guests:

Chuck Hulten of University of Maryland and The Conference Board and
Alan Anderson of ACCOUNTability Solutions and AICPA.

Today, the intangible information gap in the average company is as high as 80%. It's past time to close this gap and these are two people that can help us all understand how to do this. Please… Continue

Added by Mary Adams on November 29, 2010 at 4:41pm — No Comments

Great new article on contemporary M&A: Getting a Grip on Intangibles

Russ Banham at Treasury and Risk did a great job of laying out the importance of intangibles in mergers and acquisitions in this new article: Getting a Grip on Intangibles

Since 70% of the average deal is intangible and 50% of the average deal is goodwill, there is a screaming need for better information about what's really going on in… Continue

Added by Mary Adams on October 27, 2010 at 12:04pm — 2 Comments

Program on Intangibles for Public Relations and Investor Relations Professionals

I will be appearing at the Public Relations Society of America meeting in Boston this week:

New Era, New Valuation Shift: Communicating Intangible Assets

10/21/2010

6:00 - 8:30 p.m.

ML Strategies LLC, One Financial Center, 38th Floor Conference Room, Boston, MA 02111

Implementing PR and IR Strategies for a New Knowledge-Based Economy

As we emerge from the economic downturn, MarCom budgets are slow to recover; yet we're still charged with moving PR and… Continue

Added by Mary Adams on October 18, 2010 at 11:21am — No Comments

Sharing my notes on the Rutgers intangibles symposium

As you probably know, I was thrilled to be invited to speak at the Rutgers symposium, “Intangibles Come of Age” organized by Miklos Vasarhelyi. The final title also called it a discussion about

“comprehensive firm valuation.” And it was a wonderful discussion even

though it showed us that we have a long way to go. Most of the presentations are on line—and there will be video…

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Added by Mary Adams on September 22, 2010 at 3:15pm — No Comments

New article: Intangible Capital-looking inside the black box

Intangible Capital: Looking Inside the Black Box - I often explain that the 70% of corporate value that is intangible in companies today is stuck
inside a “black box.” This article I wrote for Strategy magazine tells
the story of a company that looked inside the black box to let loose
its potential for innovation and growth.

Added by Mary Adams on April 26, 2010 at 12:04pm — 3 Comments

Want to know what's going on at ECIC 2010?

Follow ICKC member Daan Andriessen under the Twitter name @D_Andriessen.

He is using the #ECIC hashtag but so far, he is the only one using it.

I will watch this keyword in case anyone else starts tweeting!

Added by Mary Adams on March 29, 2010 at 12:49pm — No Comments

Ideas Connect Us More Than Relationships

I was struck by this blog post today by Hutch Carpenter entitled Why Ideas are Core to Enterprise 2.0. He talks about all the hype about social media and asserts that it is really ideas that link communities together. He says:

Ideas have a unique quality in team and community forming, consistent with the emergent nature of Enterprise…

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Added by Mary Adams on February 10, 2010 at 6:16pm — 5 Comments

Intangible Assets: Measuring and Enhancing Their Contribution to Corporate Value and Economic Growth

Thanks to Ken Jarboe at the Athena Alliance (who is going to join the ICKC as soon as he breaks free) for letting us know about the publication of the report of the conference hosted in 2008 by the National Academies in Washington DC entitled Intangible Assets: Measuring and Enhancing Their Contribution to Corporate

Value and Economic Growth: Summary of a Workshop.

Back at the time, I wrote a series of posts about the… Continue

Added by Mary Adams on February 8, 2010 at 8:06pm — No Comments

Anyone going to ECIC in March?

I just put up a listing for the European Conference on Intellectual Capital which will be held in Lisbon, Portugal on March 29 and 30. I went to last year's conference and found it really valuable but won't be able to go this year.

Are you going to the ECIC in March? It would be great to share the message about the ICKC. I would also love to figure out a way to work with someone to get their agenda on the… Continue

Added by Mary Adams on January 31, 2010 at 10:30am — No Comments

Dealing with the knowledge economy: intellectual capital versus balanced scorecard

I still haven't loaded a lot of my own content into this new site (I intend to and encourage all our members to do so as well). But, in the meantime, I thought that it would be helpful to start adding some links to other folk's content (books, articles, presentations, videos) that I have also found helpful. This is a start. I hope that others will follow with more suggestions....

If I had to pick one article that sums up the perspective of the field of IC, it is this article,… Continue

Added by Mary Adams on January 24, 2010 at 10:25am — 3 Comments

Management 2.0: Leveraging the Growing Intangible Side of Your Business

A version of this article appeared in Emerald’s Business Strategy Series and won a 2009 Emerald Literati Award as a Highly Commended Paper.

The article provides a list of ten core business concepts for the knowledge era and ties them to their industrial-era counterpart including the new factory, the new management and the new accounting.

The paper was the inspiration for a book currently under contract with Praeger’s… Continue

Added by Mary Adams on January 10, 2010 at 2:30pm — No Comments