Immaterial Assets | Bertrand Duperrin's Notepad

Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed…but not luckily

October 12, 2010 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Summary : there’s a missing link in the enterprise 2.0 discourse that does not reassure organizations. They’re being asked an impressive effort to generate information, connect people, they’re being told all the benefits they can draw from that but are not explaine the mechanism that will turn this information potential into tangible results. The fact this link misses is certainly one of the reasons that explain why we still lack some matter in the ROI discussion. This transformation, that’s too often overlooked, will certainly be made possible by the implementation of organizational and management mechanisms as well as a redesign of some process.

If a chemist observes an organization through Lavoisier’s words, he would say that it’s impossible to get anything from such a system :

• Nothings is lost : wrong, organizations lose everything. They lose their non capitalized knowledge as people retire of resign. The NASA and Boeing have already painfully learned it, but not everyone has begun to prepare the future. Worse, they can’t even find what’s within their walls. A former CEO of HP used to say “if HP knew what HP knows we’d be three times more productive”. The problem still remains.

• Nothing is created : that’s the difference between business and chemistry : businesses creates, and innovates. In fact that’s theory. Practically talking they don’t create enough. Not enough innovation, not enough solutions to new problems (or not fast enough) : it’s hard to find how to solve a problem, without even mentioning how hard it is to implement any new solution.

• Everything is transformed : of course…provided organizations want it. Not only a reaction does not happen by luck, most of all in organizations where silos are built to prevent elements to mix together and where any reaction has to be kept under control. The taylorian legacy dies hard and the “silos and control” approach still rules, what causes few transformation except by luck or when a manager builds a clandestine laboratory.

Many organizations understands this is a critical stake and know they should favor transformation if they don’t want to be at risk in a near future. Favoring information capitalization and sharing, breaking down silos to create and innovate more and faster…that’s a current (or scheluded) program in many organizations and initiates call it “enterprise 2.0″.

But, to be honnest, most of them are still afraid of embracing this new paradigm, wonder if it’s really worth. They’re still waiting for an answer to this questions, some in terms of ROI calculation some others looking for the certainty that things will improve. Said in other words, they want to be sure the new potential they’ll built will be turned into tangible results. That’s a double edged issue because it both brings an answer to a strategic questions and force organizations to think about reinventing the way their employees actually work, their managers manage. But that’s the difference between an actual improvement and a façade change. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Management & HR Tagged With: articulation, Enterprise 2.0, immaterial assets, Innovation, intangible assets, knowledge, knowledge-management, problem solving, process, ROI, silos, social routine, value

Taking the most of intangible assets creates strong competitive advantage

December 21, 2008 By Bertrand DUPERRIN 1 Comment

A glance at McKinsey’s to read one of their latest production : “Using Power Curves to assess industries dynamics“.

A survey based on 150 companies revenue shows that performance doesn’t follow a bell curve but a “power curve” that shows that most companies in a given indistry are above the average. What, said differently, means that few leaders take the biggest part of he revenue and only leave crumbs to the others. Said my way it means that many companies are failing to keep up, what is not an issue in a context of growth when it’s always easy to make feasts with lots of crumbles but is worrying in the current times.

One interesting point of the survey, even if thinking it explains everything would be naive, is about the exploitation of intangible assets in a given industy. In this case the curve is more pronounced than for industries using more conventional assets.

Power curves are also promoted by intangible assets—talent, networks, brands, and intellectual property—because they can drive increasing returns to scale, generate economies of scope, and help differentiate value propositions.

This survey is sectional. I would have liked to know what makes the diffrenece inside a given industry, that’s to say if the impact of intangible assets was likely to be as imporant in “tangible assets” oriented industry where immaterial capital would have (or not) a major role if it was more taken into account.

Filed Under: Economy & New Models Tagged With: competitive-advantage, immaterial assets, intangible assets, mckinsey, performance

Enterprise 2.0 : my predictions for 2009

December 18, 2008 By Bertrand DUPERRIN 3 Comments

Honestly I was not sure I would conform to the annual predictions tradition. Finally, since my 2008 edition was not that bad (shift from “social tools at people’s disposal” to the acknowledgement it needed inclusion in business process) and Susan kindly asks for it, I’ll try to do something interesing this year.

That said, I will divide my note in two parts. As any good “thoughtleader” sometimes mistake predictions for his own wishes, I’ll try to be lucid enough to clearly separate both and end my note with a few pious hopes.

Let’s start !

Web 2.0 tools to improve information readiness

November 28, 2008 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Today, many opinions converge to admit two things :

• companies need to be more and and more reactive in order to run their traditionnal activities in a more and more complexe context, where foreseeability is very uncertain and where sharp competences and complex competences assembling are needed in a short range of time. Something like “special forces forces for special taks”, running in parallel with traditionnal activities which are companies common background operations.

• in order to match this need, adequate expertises and competences are needed.

We have no choice but to admit that high levels of performance are reached in legay and “institutionnalized” activities and the money that has been invested to improve many business processes often provided a ROI. Competencewise, we also have to admit they are really present within organizations. But, for what’s about building efficient adhoc self-organized teams, even if the need is identified it gets harder and harder to be successfull since more and more situations requires this way of doing things.

One reason is that what we call intellectual capital, if present, is not easily accessible and its owners can barely be identified. To improve things, experience and knowledge should be “findable” and “findability” can only come from putting it all in words because it’s (and will remain for years) the more efficient way of indexing and finding datas in an online network, the so-called online network being the only commons space shared by all employees in scattered companies. So people would be able to search the experience and, if they can’t find what they’re looking for, identify referent people they could contact and ask.

All this is nothing more than a matter of information and readiness.

Halves strategies lead to crisis

November 25, 2008 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

I recently wrote about issues experienced by companies that focus on halves strategies. The obvious conclusion was that preparing the future is very hard when one’s only purpose is to maintain the pas.

By the way, why do we have to prepare for the future since everything is doing right now and doing things the same way we’ve always done guarantiees the foreseeable nature of things and security ? Because one day it’s not the past that catches you up but the future that becomes present. And this day seems to have come.

That’s not about changing everything but about learning from the past while preparing the future. Today most companies stop after the first step, neglect its intangible assets and put itself at risk.

When one tries to maintain what exists, he tries to endlessly replicate what he has been doing for ages. It’s cartesian, it’s about numbers, concrete and tangible things. The exact opposite of networks, knowledge, human capital, which are nice concepts that don’t feed the bottom line ( but are you really sure ? ).

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