Starting Today

Today seems like a good time to talk about the future. Yesterday, the United States elected a new president, Barack Obama. For months we have talked about the challenges that face our nation. Success is not guaranteed for our nation or our business community. We need to up the odds and strengthen the companies that form the foundation of our national economy. Starting today.

Where does the strength of our companies come from? It’s an interesting question. The answer has changed over time. In our industrial past, it was our raw materials and manufacturing base. In more recent times, it has been our new technologies. While our advantage today continues to be related to technology, there is something more to it, the advantage comes from something more intangible.

What makes American companies great today? The ability to tap into the smarts of their people, their customers and their network. The ability to capture knowledge and make it re-usable so that no one wastes time reinventing the wheel. Great companies today are smart companies that have the capacity, the will and the ability to innovate.

Smart companies use their “installed base” of knowledge to solve existing problems better and faster than before. They anticipate new problems and new opportunities. They compete based simply on their expertise.

Google is a smart company. So is Apple. So is UPS. There are actually thousands of companies around the country that are not as well known but they may be just as smart.

Smart companies do not get competitive advantage from ownership of raw materials, from control of traditional factories, even from creation of computing hardware. Their game is software, services, design, consulting and problem solving.

But management tools and information are still largely shaped by the lessons learned in the industrial age. Knowledge does not appear on balance sheets and return on knowledge is not calculated in income statements. Being a manager in a smart company can be like trying to fly a supersonic plane using visual navigation systems. The tools don’t match up to the challenge at hand.

The answer is to get the right tools into the hands of managers across the economy. What will guarantee that American companies are great tomorrow? Learning to manage their most important competitive advantage: their smarts. Getting better at identifying, analyzing and managing their intellectual capital. Getting smarter and building ever-greater competitive advantage. Starting today.