IC and Manufacturing

For a long time, intangible capital has been seen as some abstract and theoretical concept. Indeed, many people call it intellectual capital (here’s why we don’t use the term intellectual capital). But I spend a lot of my day every day refuting this. Intangible capital is very real and very practical. It drives how and why businesses get paid by their customers.

There were two great explanations of the practical side of IC in discussions of manufacturing in the past week. Read more

Huge Opportunities for Innovation — Corporate intangible capital is ready and waiting

Although the economic recovery is slowly building up steam, there is still a lot of work to do. For one thing, we need the economic recovery to turn into a jobs recovery. To do that, we need to start doing things differently. Solve new problems. In a word, innovate.

That’s why I am thankful that Ken Jarboe just revisited Business Week’s piece entitled Obama’s 25 Ways to Rebuild America. When I read this list, I get excited because it shows how many opportunities we have to fundamentally innovate and rebuild our economy: Read more

Using Intellectual Capital to Build Two Kinds of Factories

Yesterday, I drove my mother to the airport in Providence RI after a vacation on Cape Cod. The route from Cape Cod to Providence is a mini-history lesson. You pass through New Bedford which has been a fishing hub for centuries–and still is. You pass  through Fall River which has dozens of shuttered factories built during the industrial era. There is still some manufacturing going on there. But it doesn’t look very prosperous. Of course, neither is our country. We never really replaced all the jobs that those factories created in the last couple centuries.

I have been thinking about manufacturing a lot lately. Because I am increasingly convinced that it is the key to an economic recovery. But not like those old factories in Fall River. A whole new kind of manufacturing. Read more

Protect Us from Financial Innovation

Ken Jarboe at the Athena Alliance had more to say here about financial innovation and also links to an article here from last year by Professor Elizabeth Warren of Harvard Law School who suggests the need for a  “Financial Product Safety Commission” saying “If it’s good enough for microwaves, it’s good enough for mortgages.”

I recently posted here about Much Reviled Financial Innovations. My point is that we cannot blame the technology of financial innovations and throw it away. But we should blame the people that are hawking poorly developed versions of the innovations. What Jarboe and Warren are saying is related: we need to be very systematic about looking under the hood of these innovations. Process and technology are intertwined in the intangible economy and we have to get better at analyzing both.