When I wrote my first book, My Cup Runneth Over: Setting Goals for Single Parents and Working Couples, it took me two months to write and less than a year to get published (it normally takes 18 months to three years to get published). People were amazed at my publishing accomplishments.
My world was transformed, from being a little unknown engineer in Tennessee to being a respected expert and quoted by USA Today and Ebony Magazine. It provided a great avenue for influencing others across the country and the world. Additionally, it provided me with a more diverse portfolio of passive income and revenue. In the greater scheme of thinking, I found out that my new platform was centered, not on the physical book—but on the creation of intellectual assets.
As organizations contend with global competition, many businesses will need to rethink their strategies for sustainability in the knowledge and innovation economy. Across the nation, companies are depending more on freelance workers.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of workers placed by temporary staffing agencies rose by 404,000 since September 2010. Furthermore, many gifted, laid-off workers are forced to become independent contractors and freelancers. According to the Freelancer Union, 18% of its members were forced to give up health insurance in 2009 while 39% cut back coverage. This trend is reshaping America’s workforce.
Yet, value creation will be the key to opening endless opportunities for today’s businesses. We complain about the rate of manufacturing jobs going abroad and how this reality impacts the quality of living. Perhaps the future will be ruled not by the tangible but the intangible. In fact, the knowledge economy will wreak havoc on traditional thinking.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi3Q40EPUjk]
Thomas Davenport and Kevin Desouza, intellectual strategists, argue the importance of organizations understanding their intellectual assets: “In the industrial economy, a key component of mass production and productivity—and hence economic growth—was the reuse of physical assets: molds, templates, castings and so forth. Although so much of the economy is now based on intellectual assets, we have yet to achieve a similar level of reuse and productivity improvement for that class of asset.” In this discussion, we will look at how intellectual assets will fuel the future.
Henrik Vejlgaard, author of Anatomy of a Trend, argues that emerging trends are influenced by gifted people, including entrepreneurs, designers, and artists. Vejlgaard notes that these people “create new products or invent new styles or begin doing something in a completely new way.” In the old days, creative people were the butt of jokes pertaining to finding sustainable employment.
Yet, the future will belong to just these people, as many organizations across the world will need this asset to enhance their survivability. Fueling the knowledge economy will be knowledge creation (intellectual asset creation) and knowledge management (intellectual asset management).
An important ingredient for the knowledge economy is the creation, use, storage, and positioning of an organization’s intellectual assets. Intellectual assets are valuable elements created by human ingenuity: written documents, software, musical compositions, and other intellectual spin-offs. Intellectual assets can be divided into two categories, product assets and process assets. Product assets are the specific outputs of knowledge work such as software programs or legal briefs.
In contrast, process assets are codified knowledge about how to perform a task such as manufacturing steps for a new product. Some countries have already realized the critical value of intellectual assets. In May 2004, the Ministerial Council in France studied how intellectual assets impacted value creation, growth, and economic performance. The study noted, “The continuous shift toward a knowledge-based and innovation-driven economy has brought to the forefront the issue of how knowledge is created, disseminated, retained and used to obtain economic returns.”
Intellectual assets will place individuals at the center stage of wealth creation across the globe. Today, traditional publishers struggle to stay in business as the world has been overrun by knowledge creation. Many experts will argue that the Big 6 (Random House, Inc., Penguin Putnam, HarperCollins, Holtzbrinck, Time Warner, and Simon & Schuster) dominate the publishing world. Yet, the world is changing.
According to a Para Publishing study, traditional publishers are in trouble. In 2004, more than 1.8 million books were in print. A new book is published every 30 seconds. With challenges from the global economies, digital publishing models, and industry standard changes, major publishers are bombarded with changes that impact their bottom-line. In 2002, major publishers decreased output by 5% yet titles published rose by 6%.
What is driving the publishing industry now? It is independent publishers and literary entrepreneurs emerging in this digital age. In fact, 70% of the titles are now coming from small or self-publishers. In the digital age, individuals can transform one idea into multiple formats including paper back, hardcover, MP3 files, DvD, and other downloadable files. Therefore, knowledge creators are building an empire of intellectual assets. Websites like Createspace.com and Lulu.com give individuals the power to create wealth while building influence effortlessly.
What modifications will need to be made in the publishing model to incorporate intellectual assets created by entrepreneurs? How can organizations take advantage of these gifted creators in their organizations and still fully control their knowledge management processes?
© 2010 by Daryl D. Green
decisionshigh performance teamsintellectual assetsintellectual propertyleadershipoperations management
Related Articles
October 18, 2010 at 4:17 pm
Well first I believe we need to bring back the love of reading to the current youth at hand. We have become so obsessed with the use of technology that we barely read anything at all let alone a good book. One of the main reasons I believe this is a growing issue is the reliability we have on the net for everything. For example I remember having to actually read books for book reports, however today’s students find cheat sheets online to read, and manage to go through their entire college careers without having read a single page on paper. It is important for parents and teachers to promote and encourage students the value of reading books. Because at the rate of book publication declining so will the future of potential intellectuals who write those books will decline as well. Parents and educators must make reading interesting as well as hopeful so that their children wish to come back to it.
Reference:
http://www.educationask.com/home-schooling/57-Home-Schooling.html
November 12, 2010 at 4:33 pm
I agree with Riyam 100%. Where do we draw the bottom line to say enough is enough and start getting back to the basics? The basics, like actually reading a book, is what got us to this point in the first place? These blog enters are a great example of how books are on the downward slope. Even Dr. Green allowed us to read articles from the internet, instead of actually reading a magazine or newspaper article or a book about the many different subjects we must blog about. However, I do feel that the internet can reach so many more individuals about a cause, with new technology, and with learning possibilities, where a book can only be read if you check it out of the public library or purchase it.
I can remember having to do research with actually books, newspapers, and magazine articles. This takes time, and as much as we don’t like to admit it, we live in a world obsessed with saving time. I feel that is what will make the difference in the future for the production process of books. Because time is money and everyone wants to save both time and money, and what better way to start then by reading an article on line for free instead of purchasing it at a much higher amount. In the long run society’s intellectual assets will not be worth very much because the knowledge (input) will not return (output) students and/or employees with a higher order of thinking skills.
November 23, 2010 at 9:31 pm
I agree that people need to get back to a basic understanding of the working world. I do not mean that people should forget everything they have learned, but they could learn more blue-color skills. There are so many people in today’s workforce that have trouble writing a paper. That should never be an issue in no matter what field you work in. Well skilled, usually well educated, workers often join unions. 15.1 million workers were members of a union in 2009. Only 7.4 million union workers were in the private sector, as opposed to 7.9 million union members in the private sector. These groups are highly skilled individuals that can band together. They pass on their knowledge to the future workers. Unions are one of the last great sources of knowledge resources this country has left.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm
October 18, 2010 at 6:46 pm
In the article, Wrangling over Intellectual Property, Frank L. Hubard speaks to the subject that has grown large as companies and universities are more and more finding themselves at the negotiation table over ownership, licensing, royalties and a number of other concerns surrounding intellectual property. Frank stated that “many companies feel if they’ve funded the research, they should have exclusive and sole rights to all the resulting intellectual property. Universities respond that the contracted research builds on years of prior research at the university not funded by the company. Lack of agreement over such issues has caused Corporate America to seek solutions elsewhere, in some cases taking its research proposals to foreign schools”. I think one possible solution to this would be to set up a publishing, copyright royalty process that would reward the creative people for their hard work. This type of system has worked very well in the music world. When someone plays a song on in this case uses the protected material they pay a small fee in the form of royalty that goes to the creator of the material. This would reward the creators and let the companies use the material for the betterment of their business.
Frank L Huband. (2006). Wrangling Over Intellectual Property. ASEE Prism, 15(6), 5. Retrieved October 18, 2010, from ProQuest Education Journals. (Document ID: 988436511).
October 18, 2010 at 7:52 pm
Good discussion all!
Derrick, excellent comments on the process!!!!
Let’s go deeper.
If we are creating intellectual assets,.which are intangile and tangile or neither(aka physical books versus e-books), how do organizations design such a process to be both efficent and effective?
Yet, people are not robots. How do knowledge creators exist in such an environment?
October 19, 2010 at 2:33 pm
In Cat Rambo’s article “Thoughts on Electronic Publishing Vs. Traditional Print Publishing” she as many other authors believe that the traditional publishing process will eventually be replaced with online and electronic publishing (1). The reason for this is that it is much quicker than traditional publishing, and authors can have full control of what they want published without the influence of editors and others that are involved in the traditional process. Cat has published work both ways and believes that the traditional publishers are doomed in the future. With this being said, in order for the “Big 6” to continue they must to begin to do some type of electronic publishing as well. This has worked in the music world and it is evident that people are willing to pay for information online, so the “Big 6” needs to incorporate electronic publishing at some level before it is too late. Although I do not believe that traditional books will be obsolete in the near future, I do believe that authors will become increasingly frustrated in the traditional process therefore in order for them to survive they must find some type of balance between electronic and traditional publishing.
Resource:
Rambo, Cat. “Guest Post–Revolution #9: Thoughts on Electronic Publishing Vs. “Traditional” Print Publishing.” SFWA. 27 July 2010. Web. 19 Oct. 2010. .
Leave A Reply
Company assets are to be used to help us do our jobs and should not be misused or wasted. Quality Control
I believe these intellectually gifted people will re-create the publishing industry to fit their own model. If the “Big 6” is not willing to adapt and include these innovators then they will eventually cease to exist. The fittest and most innovative of species will eventually overtake the inferior (1). I believe in this situation you could apply the concept of “Darwinism” to the publishing company and their industry. Even as entrepreneurs are included in the culture and the publishing model their intellect will exceed that of “old style” publishing companies thus creating a need for the gifted to move past and separate themselves from the barriers that are holding them from greatness. This is simply part of the process. New ideas come along that cause change. In this case the world of “paper” is obsolete and the companies who do not recognize this will also be.
Reference:
Bege, Micheal. J. The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism. June, 2008