Bill Simmons shows his ignorance about the definition of intellectual capital
October 21, 2011 by Mary Adams
It probably won’t surprise you to learn that I follow the terms intellectual capital and intangible capital on Twitter and the web (and I highly recommend that you do the same for the search terms related to your expertise).
This morning there is a storm of comments on Twitter about a Bill Simmons post about the NBA negotiations where he says:
I don’t trust the players’ side to make the right choices, because they are saddled with limited intellectual capital. (Sorry, it’s true.) The owners’ side can’t say the same; they should be ashamed. Same for the agents.
I wouldn’t question Bill Simmons on much but I will call him to task on his use of the term intellectual capital.
Who’s Bill Simmons? He’s a sportswriter. I have heard about him for years because he was an early writer to jump to the web and my husband, Mike Oleksak, (also my co-author, business partner, co-parent and more–but in this case, my husband laughing and sharing posts with me) has been a fan since Simmons early days on the web.
In his comments, Simmons uses “intellectual capital” as a synonym of intelligence. This is a common mistake. But it’s a frustrating one to those of us who study IC. (It’s also one of the reasons that we prefer the term intangible capital; it avoids the confusion with intelligence and with intellectual property).
IC (intellectual or intangible capital) in a personal, group or a corporate sense is a holistic view of knowledge. It recognizes four categories of knowledge:
- Human – knowledge and experience in peoples’ heads
- Relationship – shared knowledge from our networks
- Structural – operationalized knowledge in the form of everything from processes, data, designs, writings
- Strategic – knowledge of how to combine the other forms into a useful package
In the case of the NBA, it’s tempting to write a detailed explanation of the individual and shared IC of players, agents and owners but I’ll try to keep it brief. Players bring all four kinds of knowledge to the table:
- their own knowledge and experience
- their fans and relationships with teams
- their contributions to playbooks and team operations plus their contributions on media like Twitter
- their packaging as players and media figures
You could do the same analysis of owners and agents. In fact, when you look at things this way, you’ll see that each group brings different pieces of the whole to the table.
The reason that the players, agents and owners are all at the table together is that they need each other. And they do bring different knowledge to the table.
We all need to broaden our understanding of knowledge and IC. It takes a lot of different kinds of knowledge to make individuals successful. And it takes even more kinds of knowledge to make groups and businesses successful. Let’s embrace that and understand it as the great opportunity of the knowledge era.
Next time Bill, disagree with their views but don’t insult their IC. You’re the one that ends up looking ignorant.
If you want to learn more, here’s a starting definition of intangible capital
I think you may have erred in interpreting his comments. I don’t believe he was using “intellectual capital” as a synonym for intelligence, and even if that was his intent I’d argue that the players do have limited IC relative to the owners with respect to these negotiations. Though the players have representatives working on their behalf, they are active participants in the negotiations, so I will refer to them only.
In the four categories:
Human: Many (I would bet most) of the superstar players involved in negotiations do not have any training in economics or negotiations, whereas the lawyers, owners, and their negotiators do. Kevin Garnett was involved in the previous NBA lockout negotiations, although he has never attended college so he has almost certainly never had any training in the economics of collective bargaining. Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, and Dwight Howard also entered the NBA out of high school. Relative to their opposition, the players have limited intellectual capital with respect to the knowledge and experience normally required to act as a negotiator for a multi-billion dollar contract.
Relationship: Though the players obviously have relationships with their fans and teams as you say, the owners are better connected in terms of their business relationships than the players are.
Structural: The owners have never opened their books completely to the players’ side, so the players are dealing with a data deficit. I also doubt that they are steeped in the operational and historical aspects of negotiating processes.
Strategic: The players do have some experience in contract negotiations, as they have likely played some part in the negotiation of their own contracts. However, most of them (I’d bet all of them except Garnett) have never participated in a collective bargaining negotiation, so they almost certainly have limited strategic IC relative to the owners.
I can’t say I know exactly what Simmons was thinking but my guess is that you two actually agree with one another and that Simmons comment (I don’t trust the players’ side to make the right choices, because they are saddled with limited intellectual capital) should be interpreted as “they are saddled with limited intellectual capital when it comes to negotiating.” Simmons isn’t arguing that the players have less Intellectual Capital than anyone else, but rather that their knowledge of negotiation is severely lacking in comparison with the owners/agents/lawyers and that they cannot be relied on to fix the economics of the situation. I think Simmons would make the same argument of anyone, including himself or, as he did in his article today, the Hollywood writers. I think you both are right and that what you’re arguing is actually quite similar in essence.
Thanks Damon and Joey –
And thanks Damon for pointing to the common ground…Yes, I think everyone agrees that the players don’t have the same negotiation/business skills as the owners and agents. The question is what this says about how their relationship should be structured.
Should the players just step back and say, “you all know better than we do so just let us know how much you think we deserve”? That’s obviously a very top-down attitude and it’s not one that is appropriate in this circumstance.
Unless you can fire all your workers and bring in new ones, then the top-down approach doesn’t make sense. You have to find ways to be more collaborative and transparent. To me, Joey’s comment was very telling that the owners have never opened their books to the players. If that is the case, why should the players trust them?
This is a common dilemma in the knowledge economy. Knowledge and capability are dangerous things in a worker (if you want to be in control). They can make them great contributors to a company’s success. But workers can also take their skills and walk out the door. It calls for a whole new approach to management. In our book, we describe this as the shift from command and control to orchestration and collaboration.
Do you agree? Would a different approach be more productive or do you think the owners are doing the right thing?
Joey made a great point about the players not opening their books and allowing the players complete transparency. The owners have said they’ve lost as much as $300 million but they have not revealed in what context or how that deficit is allocated from team to team. At the moment the players have very few reasons to trust the owners — something that has been noted by most people covering the lockout and the negotiations.
I agree with your assertion that the players should not simply take whatever the owners will give them and I know that Simmons would as well. I’ve read every article (and tweet) he’s written on the subject and what he’s suggesting is that either the owners and the players should compromise by sacrificing one point of contention in order to gain another (a, “ok you get this one, but I’ll take the next e.g. 50-50 BRI split — a win for the owners — but no hard cap — a win for the players — and so on) OR that the current CBA model gets completely blown up and an entirely new system created.
Here is where Simmons is saying that this should fall largely under the control of the owners/commissioner because they have the intellectual capacity (business wise) that the players do not. Of course even here he’s not suggesting that the owners come up with a system that favors them and leaves the players out to dry in the process. If the owners propose something that hurts the players they can always say no, as they already have. Ultimately blowing up the current system could lead to some new, innovative ideas that could benefit the players and the owners and wouldn’t create the same derisiveness that exists right now. As Simmons wrote today, both sides are so entrenched regarding their current demands that it’s going to be very hard for them to budge. If you create a plan completely (e.g. no salary cap whatsoever, as he wrote today) then you might have more success.
In a sentence, Simmons (I believe) wants the owners to create a system that would benefit the league as a whole (owners, players, fans, etc.) that the players, with the help of their agents, believed was the best and most fair deal possible.
Who are you and why are you critiquing Bill Simmons?
You’ve probably never read a column by Simmons before this one so I can’t imagine you would have any legitimate context as to what Simmons meant by his statement against the players. And yet, you ride in like a white knight trying to defend your definition of intellectual capital?
The previous commenters, especially “Damon,” coherently resolve the misunderstanding. I, however, take exception to the entire idea that you’re some kind of language moderator for sports writers and, perhaps, the internet at large. You blog for a website that until now has likely lingered in relative obscurity. You fuss about the way a sports writer uses a single phrase, a sports writer whom you admittedly do not read and had to discover the usage of this phrase through indirect means. But the hits keep on coming: you then imprint your own definition on Simmons’s idea (explaining the players’ Human, Relationship, Structural, & Strategic capital) in a context which does not make sense, e.g. mentioning the value of players’ contributions to their playbooks. Please, explain to me how players’ contributions to their playbooks has anything to do with the salary cap, BRI, or the mid-level exception.
And lastly, you call Simmons ignorant and link to the apparently sole “correct” definition of Intellectual Capital via your own website. Intellectual honesty? “X is defined as Y because I say it is!”
Intellectual capital admittedly has a certain definition in the business lexicon of which you speak. And yes, your definition accurately depicts that. But it’s a lexicon, and who are you, “Mary Adams, Titan of Language Industry” to say that everyone must abide by this strict definition, and no one can co-opt mere words for their own sake? You don’t own words. You certainly don’t own this phrase. Simmons and anyone else can use any words to describe any thoughts, and if their audience understands what they’re trying to convey, then the definition inherent in their usage of it will always be accurate precisely because it achieved the goal of the audience’s understanding. Simmons’s audience understood what he was saying. Riding in on your horse–a marginal business blog–to give an empty retort like this makes you Don Quixote 2.0. Congratulations.
“In his comments, Simmons uses “intellectual capital” as a synonym of intelligence.” Wrong.
Damon got it right: “… should be interpreted as ‘they are saddled with limited intellectual capital when it comes to negotiating.’” Simmons is actually using the term as you have prescribed it.
Maybe you should read his entire post before you start criticizing what he said and just using it as a jumping off point to write a post. But that’s how you get hits on the internet.
Did you call out Bill Simmons because you wanted his readers to go to your blog? He has a very successful site (estimated over 10 mil per month), and well, I took undergrad business classes too, I understand the point you are trying to make.
it is petty, and you are looking for attention. Good job, you corrected his verb usage. And you got your name on a top site.
“That’s obviously a very top-down attitude and it’s not one that is appropriate in this circumstance.”
Perhaps. But these negotiations between the owners and the players are different than a typical collective bargaining negotiation or contract negotiation. Both sides have vastly different goals. The owners have decided (correctly, in Bill Simmons’ view) that the NBA faces a long term strategic problem, which I would sum up as 1) Team revenues face a secular decline because fans, for a variety of reasons, are not as interested in buying season ticket packages, and 2) A handful of big market teams dominate the competitive landscape. The players’ main interest is in maintaining the largest cut of the profits for themselves as a group.
Bill Simmons’ argument is that the owners have it mostly right and it’s not in the players’ interest to take such a hard line on the percentage of profits they get. In the short term, they’re losing money they’ll never get back. In the long term, the league has to address the shifting paradigm in fan involvement with the league, and realistically the players are not going to be the ones to figure that out (and in any case, they haven’t made public what their vision is for the NBA going forward, assuming they have one). Their skills and training are centered around playing basketball and promoting their personal brands, not strategic business planning.
I really think you should go read his argument before taking an excerpt and running with it. The truth is his argument is valid. He’s not talking about the very definition of intellectual capital. He is speaking specifically in terms of the NBA economic system. The truth is the players didn’t even really shape that system. Their agents, player union leader and owners created that system. He’s got a rebuttal for your claims in his latest article. You should really go read it to see where he’s coming from.
Are you kidding me? You’re going to jump on a choice of words and make that an entire column? Do me a favor and don’t say “NBA” ever again. It’s insulting to those of us who follow it and actually understand it. How dare you fault someone who writes lengthy articles on a regular basis for ONE ‘incorrect’ choice of words.
Next time Mary, don’t be a hypercritical you-know-what. You’re the one that ends up looking ignorant.
Mary, how did you manage to get “you all know better than we do so just let us know how much we deserve” from “the players suck at negotiating?”
I get the impression you’ve not read anything Bill has written on the subject up to this point, so you’re taking his comments out of context. I also get the feeling you don’t have a firm grasp on the entirety of the situation.
The players don’t actually know how much they’re worth. In fact most of them overvalue their services. I would say 80% of the league is overpaid. They sure as hell didn’t negotiate their own contracts. They have agents, who are trained to do this kind of thing. If the players had any capacity to negotiate, they wouldn’t need agents.
It also wouldn’t matter to the players what exactly is in the owners’ books. All the players care about is getting paid, and that’s not murky in any way. The players are only worried about their contract size, length, and guarantees. You also can’t expect anyone to feel even a modicum of empathy for them when those contracts guarantee tens of millions a year and they still under-perform. How is that fair to the owners or fans?
Simmons is right. This isn’t about some top down or bottom up approach. It’s a symbiotic relationship. If anything the owners depend on the players more. But the owners are business savvy. The players are not. It’s that simple. It’s not their unintelligent or useless. They’re just not any good at the business side of basketball.
And the issue here isn’t even the employer-employee relationship. The issue is the entire business model. As Simmons puts it, it’s becoming more fun and more convenient to stay at home to watch the games, and that makes the owners scared about revenue from ticket sales. This especially hits the smaller markets hard.
But to answer your question, NOBODY is doing the right thing. Nobody. The owners are in the wrong, and the players are playing right into their hands. That doesn’t make them victims, just stupid. Both sides need to take a look at their leadership and oust them from power. They need to send Stern, Hunter, the snitching agents and all of the players on indefinite vacations, lock the best owners (Jerry Buss, Mark Cuban) , GMs (Sam Presti), and agents in a conference suite for 3 days, and let the bang it out. Voila, a better approach.
But I doubt you care about any of that, since you just accused a writer being ignorant because his understanding of “intellectual capital” wasn’t correct. So next time, maybe read up on the whole situation before you accuse someone of being ignorant. Because you’re the one that ends up looking ignorant.
Mary,
I agree with the majority of the two previous posts. The players are working from a severely disadvantaged position. It is neither a racist (as other blogs have suggested) nor an inaccurate statement.
Joey, the first commenter, is incorrect in his statement that the owners have not “opened their books”. They did, but it makes little difference in this instance. David Stern has a well-deserved reputation for ruthlessness in negotiations. The players are correct in their distrust of him and the team owners.
The unique situation of NBA players barely little relation to that of the average worker, even in a knowledge economy. The workers do not have a viable alternative and cannot walk out. Foreign leagues offer only a small fraction of the salaries of the NBA. They are unlikely to carry their professional knowledge to a competitor.
The situation is most similar to a person’s dealings with his or her insurance company in the event of an accident. The individual would be naive in completely trusting the company’s assessment, but that person does not have the requisite knowledge to make his or her own evaluation. You need a trustworthy third party with expertise in this area to match up with the insurance company in the negotiations.
In the same vein, the NBAPA needs to hire its own team of businessmen to brainstorm new ideas for the direction of the league. Simply holding firm on the zero-sum aspects of the negotiation is indicative of tunnel vision. New ideas are necessary for the league as a whole.
The owners want to fix the system by making the players concede at every turn. The players are not willing (or able…or have ever considered….who knows?) to come to the table with demands that the NBA change their business model in a more profound way that solves their financial shortcomings. That the players are too dim is not the point I believe Mr. Simmons is trying to make. It’s about taking the owners arguments and turning them on their collective heads.
I know it’s the political “third rail” but if I were a player I would ask how a league like the NBA, which claims to be financially unstable, could continue to finance a loss-leader like the WNBA. Look, I don’t want to see professional womens’ basketball go away in the US…but the WNBA does count on a great deal of NBA financing to survive and Commissioner David Stern champions the WNBA at every turn (and good for him for the support). But you can’t say that the players have to give-give-give and that an entire NBA season could go away and never come back, while the same powers-that-be continue to finance a WNBA summer league that has yet (by any realistic metric) to turn even close to a profit. It is merely one point, and a controversial one at that, but this is a system that needs to be fixed on a grand scale and concentrating merely on the finer points will not do.
When you choose to write about professional basketball, you’re the one that ends up looking ignorant, Mary. Bill Simmons knows this issue inside and out. You do not.
Hi Mary,
I would like you to represent us going forward as you sure seem to have a very high ic and know a lot about our situation. I will also be inviting the cheerleaders cause their ic is high as well. Let me know if i’m missing anyone, thanks.
Billy
Mary, I think the rest has been satisfactorily deconstructed, but I’d make objection to one argument you make in your comment addressing the comments made to your blog post. Namely that “It’s not like the player’s should just say ‘you know better than us, tell us what the deal should be’”
Simmons isn’t advocating this. It’s intellectually dishonest to think that the two possibilities are:
1) Players are at the heart of the negotiations
2) Owners dictate to players what is good for them.
The third option is the one that 90%+ of the league take in their own individual negotiations – hire someone to represent you. The NBAPA has a staff of lawyers and negotiators that have years of experience negotiating collective agreements. Instead of trusting in their experts, the players are insisting in involving themselves and its not helping. They’re taking an adversarial approach to a process that works much better in a conciliatory system. The two sides should NOT be focused on “winning” but instead coming to a compromise deal. It’s a completely different mentality than that taken by players on the court.
I think Jason Whitlock said it best – the NBA players have as much business negotiating with David Stern as he has challenging them to a game of one-on-one. Both are pros in their respective fields, but complete amateurs in the other.
Thank you to everyone for sharing your thoughts. I just checked out Bill Simmons’ latest post where he answers the criticism of his use of “intellectual capital” in reference to the players. http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7131896/proactively-mourning-nba
He says:
“So I’m ignorant because I don’t think NBA players will be the ones creating a new economic model for the NBA? What are their qualifications to do such a thing? If they’re so financially savvy, why do they need agents to negotiate their deals? Why have we made such a big fuss these past 10 years over how many athletes (not just NBA players) are going broke? Why should we expect them to have an advantage negotiating against a bunch of billionaires who have law degrees and MBAs and make big-picture deals all the time?”
The use of financial savvy is much more specific and more fair to the players.
My comments may come out of left field to some. But words matter. And use of the phrase “intellectual capital” matters to me. It’s too loaded a a phrase to use lightly.
And while many of the comments here focus on the specifics of this one situation, it actually reflects questions faced across the U.S. business community:
-How can/should we innovate our business model to remain competitive?
-Does our financial model need innovation as well?
-What is the role of (and pay off to) our workers and collaborators in achieving these changes?
Answering these questions is actually the goal of the field of intellectual and intangible capital. And why I care about the words and the ideas.
Hope this helps clarify my perspective. I’m open to your thoughts.
It takes a big person to admit they were wrong and apologize. On behalf of Simmons’s readers, we accept your apology. (Oh, wait . . . still waiting).
“But words matter. And use of the phrase “intellectual capital” matters to me. It’s too loaded a a (sic) phrase to use lightly.”
What other words or phrases might be too loaded to use lightly? How about “ignorant”??? Remember when you triumphantly called Simmons that? Don’t use that lightly. He’s certainly not ignorant of the NBA (He wrote The Book of Basketball, a NY Times Bestseller, two concepts you’re unfamiliar with). Is he ignorant of *your* business lexicon and *your* definition of “intellectual capital”? Possibly, but if so then he’s with 98% of the country. What if I wrote my own blog post about how a no-name business blogger is ignorant of the NBA (surprise!)? Could I feel half as good about myself as you must, sitting back in your chair smirking at how clever you are to have linguistically trumped a famous writer/author?
Good point, ignorance is a strong word. I do apologize. But I don’t feel smug about this. I was surprised that this post received the attention it did. And I should point out that Simmons didn’t have to call it out on his blog.
But as passionate as you feel about basketball and Bill Simmons, that’s how passionate I feel about intellectual/intangible capital. I work with ordinary business people trying to save and create jobs. And the answer is to learn to leverage the amazing IC of the U.S. workforce. So if I can help draw attention to it, then I’m doing my job as much as Bill Simmons is doing his.
Mary you idiot
LONG LIVE SIMMONS
Can you just admit that you are wrong? You obviously have no idea what he means, but you continue to argue as if you were right and he was wrong. Stop. Your next blog should be an apology to Bill because his statements were clear and on point. At least you got your 5 minutes of fame.
Mary.
If you want to know why simmons may have called you out as he did, you should read the other writer that took him extremely out of context:
http://newblackman.blogspot.com/2011/10/bill-simmons-and-bell-curve-limited.html
There the charges of racism reach near delusional proportions. So you might be taking the heat for both of you. But both of you make similar rhetorical moves when u try to take him to task for your perceived grievances. But hey, at least he thought yours was worthy of a response.
But also realize you’re trying to establish a definition of I.c. that currently only exists in your subfield. Simmons approaches this when he uses his phrase in everyday language. His use wasn’t as technically precise as your business consulting field uses, but that’s because he’s in a more general context. But that’s how language is.
That fact of the matter is you are not doing the job you intend. You are making people hate you for not understanding context and you are absolutely coming off as smug. Anyone who read that article would realize Bill was trying to say the players are stupid when it comes to business in a politically correct way. It may have been a bad word choice but it did not deserve an article deriding a simple word choice.
“And I should point out that Simmons didn’t have to call it out on his blog.”
What’s exactly is your point here? I should point out that you didn’t have to call him out in the first place for syntax that was overwhelmingly clear. (Note: clear and correct do not have to perfectly overlap in most languages, and English is no exception.) I didn’t have to get out of bed today either; but I had a choice to, and made that choice. Or did you mean something not-exactly-matching-the-words-you-used?
“So if I can help draw attention to it, then I’m doing my job as much as Bill Simmons is doing his.”
Come on, you’re being delusional if you think the majority of attention this has garnered is due to some type of enlightenment of terminology.
“Next time Bill, disagree with their views but don’t insult their IC. You’re the one that ends up looking ignorant.”
Next time Mary, use some combination of common sense and/or actually reading the source article before taking a personal stab at the author. If you truly meant only to defend the definition of one of your reserved phrases, you never would have needed to go this route.
As others have said: enjoy the traffic [if nothing else]. One kudos you deserve is that you put your name behind the point you wanted to make. Anonymity creates quite a cesspool of irresponsible conversation (this post has now become self-aware?!), so it’s cool that you are comfortable posting as yourself. But it would be cooler if you could admit that in this specific case you created a straw man and named it Bill.
Mary,
I see what you did here. You clearly wanted to draw attention to your site, and you’ve done so. Please stop claiming that “intellectual capital” is a loaded phrase. You be advertisin’. That is the only motivating factor in your decision to rip on Bill Simmons’ article. That is why it was so easy for you to concede that you may’ve been wrong. You are not a big person for admitting to your mistake, because you don’t really care about his so-called “misuse” of your beloved phrase, you just wanted to direct internet traffic to your site. Nice try, but you didn’t fool anyone. By the way, your explanation of the 4 different types of knowledge was gave me a good laugh. Seriously, contributions to the playbooks and contributions through Twitter. Truly hilarious.
The problem with this critique is that intellectual capital is not a thing – it is not defined in a dictionary. Simmons’s usage was correct in looking at it through a business or economic definition of the word intellectual capital – it was just incompatible with the “touchy feely” definition being peddled by you for profit.
Moreover, that definition is incorrect. Take law for instance. A lawyer’s client could bring tons of intellectual capital to the table using your definition. He certainly knows his business or person, his mode of operation or his usual actions, and what he was doing in the time of question. However, he brings no, ZERO intellectual capital to most legal proceedings or arbitration. In fact, it would be malpractice in a lot of scenarios to let a client say or do anything – he simply doesn’t have the intellectual capacity to argue statue interpretation or tort elements, etc, and his speaking could cloud your argument.
I think that analogy is exactly akin to Simmons piece (might even be a stretch to say its analogy as negotiations are nearly legal proceedings).
Mary, do you agree that your definition is incompatible with respect to a legal setting? I can see why Simmons was upset with you, it’s frustrating people try to coin incorrect definitions for personal gain.
Mary,
The backlash to your post is because no one likes to be called ignorant, especially when he has knowledge regarding the ins and outs of the NBA exceeding at least two standard deviations of the general population.
Your definition of IC is shackled to the more recognized general accounting term of intangible capital, which most learned people would understand right away as business accounting lexicon. No one owns an exclusive definition to “intellectual capital” which, in the case he used it, refers to the players’ lack of knowledge and participation regarding the business side of their profession.
Using your own definitions, Simmons could argue that what the players severely lack is structural intellectual capital, as their media contributions could be argued as more Relationship or Human. They are drafted by organizations for their attributes, drilled in a system the coaches put together (for they playbooks they have to study), and paid according to contracts and endorsements negotiated for them by ruthless agents. Basketball is a game, but the NBA is a business, a multi-billion dollar organization that is run by guys who emulate Jack Welsh and Sun Tzu.
The next time you meet a group of NBA superstars, try asking them to explain the concept of balance sheet amortization, see what you get. (Probably the same response if they asked you to explain weak-side help defense.)
Your apology, couched in a reply to your own blog post, is rather weak. That’s no excuse for people to make personal attacks on you. But if you believe in the power of words, then you can see how your own poor choices have come back to bite you.
Best Regards,
Jack
“Mary, you’re out of your element… Dude, the literal definition of the term ‘intellectual capital’ is not the issue here!”
You just wrote an entire article devoted to saying Bill Simmons may have possibly misused the term Intellectual Capital.
Congrats. By writing this misguided article, visitors to your site went up tenfold. I hope that was your true goal, because your point is as ignorant as the ignorance you’re attempting to portray.
Now please return to obscurity. Cheers.
This is all a tempest in a teacup…or should I say an athletic cup?
It seems to me that you are positing a definition of intellectual capital that you prefer. It appears to be a term of art in your field. However, the term is not defined the way you prefer by the general public and despite your efforts, you cannot enforce its definition as you please. Usage in general parlance defines a word far more impactfully than fiat by someone from above.