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Collaboration as an Intangible Asset

Harvard Business Review

Interestingly, intangible assets are all the rage these days on Wall Street. Investors grapple daily in an effort to figure out how to value companies whose accounting assets — things like land, capital, products, and licenses — don't adequately express their true market value.

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Do You Know What Your Company’s Data Is Worth?

Harvard Business Review

Data contributes not only to brand equity, but to what constitutes product and service delivery in globally connected and hyper-competitive markets. Using the same formula, Apple’s intangible assets in 2014 were $280 billion — or almost twice the value of its 2015 calculation.

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Why Financial Statements Don’t Work for Digital Companies

Harvard Business Review

In the 2016 book The End of Accounting , NYU Stern Professor Baruch Lev claimed that over the last 100 years or so, financial reports have become less useful in capital market decisions. Our research has found that intangible investments have surpassed property, plant, and equipment as the main avenue of capital creation for U.S.

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What’s Driving Superstar Companies, Industries, and Cities

Harvard Business Review

We focus on economic profit rather than revenue size, market share, or productivity growth because these other metrics risk including firms that are simply large and may not create economic value. Acquisitions, bold investment in intangible assets, and attracting talent can ultimately make the difference.

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A Novel Idea for Putting Sidelined Cash to Work

Harvard Business Review

With interest rates at historic lows, market volatility, political uncertainty, the European crisis, severe commodity price fluctuations, and other unpredictable market conditions, corporate brands and executives have been understandably inclined to sit on the sidelines. banks require to secure commercial loans.

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The Answer to Short-Termism Isn’t Asking Investors to Be Patient

Harvard Business Review

An informed shareholder, who looks beyond earnings numbers and analyzes the company’s intangible assets, would notice that the firm has mortgaged its future. Gathering information on a firm’s intangible assets is costly, and so not worth doing if you own only a tiny bit of stock in a company.

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Startups Could Fundamentally Change the Way Big Investors Operate

Harvard Business Review

This disconnect is a major problem for the continuing development of efficient capital markets. Collectively, the world’s investment giants hold in excess of $70 trillion in assets, which represents the bulk of investable capital globally. How is this state of affairs possible? How is this state of affairs possible?