4Q2007
Well, for anyone out there in "Corporate America," it is definitely the "Fourth Quarter." I have friends whose jobs have evaporated. One was given a great performance appraisal and a raise, only to have his employment terminated due to "performance issues." More like his former employer's failure to perform financially.
Another friend had one third of his company close. It happened to be the third in which he worked. His former employer merged with another company and rather than picking the best of the bunch, they just took the smaller of the merging companies and dumped anyone who was redundant.
Sometimes I wonder about about the people running the show and what were they thinking! The job of every publicly traded company is to "increase their shareholder value." The problem is that most of the management team sees value as share price...not innovation, earnings per share, the people, the processes, the technologies, and the intellectual capital that are their true business value.
I'm not sure I can place the blame on management. Many times, I can't understand the investors or the analysts. Google is all intellectual capital. What do they really "make?" What is the final product or component? They are a meta-data provider. The content they deliver via their search engine isn't the data you requested. It is a collection of paths that may or may not bring you to the data for which you are searching. And based on your serch criteria they provide the requester with targeted advertising in the form of "sponsored links."
People are betting big on the possibilities. In the meantime, I'm more than a little concerned that some of the management team fail to realize that much of their "corporate value" is in their people, methods, and processes, not in their technology. If you don't believe that, take a look at the Fortune 50 and how they guard and protect
their intellectual capital. Now , look at many of the patent filings from these companies over the past five or so years. Many of those patents are "business method patents" or "process patents." While people may be 50% - 60% of the operating cost these people are 100% of the innovation. To date, I can't recall seeing process or method file a patent application for a new method,process, or technology.
Another friend had one third of his company close. It happened to be the third in which he worked. His former employer merged with another company and rather than picking the best of the bunch, they just took the smaller of the merging companies and dumped anyone who was redundant.
Sometimes I wonder about about the people running the show and what were they thinking! The job of every publicly traded company is to "increase their shareholder value." The problem is that most of the management team sees value as share price...not innovation, earnings per share, the people, the processes, the technologies, and the intellectual capital that are their true business value.
I'm not sure I can place the blame on management. Many times, I can't understand the investors or the analysts. Google is all intellectual capital. What do they really "make?" What is the final product or component? They are a meta-data provider. The content they deliver via their search engine isn't the data you requested. It is a collection of paths that may or may not bring you to the data for which you are searching. And based on your serch criteria they provide the requester with targeted advertising in the form of "sponsored links."
People are betting big on the possibilities. In the meantime, I'm more than a little concerned that some of the management team fail to realize that much of their "corporate value" is in their people, methods, and processes, not in their technology. If you don't believe that, take a look at the Fortune 50 and how they guard and protect
their intellectual capital. Now , look at many of the patent filings from these companies over the past five or so years. Many of those patents are "business method patents" or "process patents." While people may be 50% - 60% of the operating cost these people are 100% of the innovation. To date, I can't recall seeing process or method file a patent application for a new method,process, or technology.