Exposing $4.7 Trillion Annually in Undervalued Information
Something strange began to happen with company valuations beginning twenty to thirty years ago. Book values increasingly began to diverge — go lower — from stock prices or acquisition prices. Between 1982 and 1992 the ratio of book value to market value decreased from 62% to 38% for public US companies [1]. The why of this mystery has largely been solved, but what to do about it has not. Significantly, semantic technologies and approaches offer both a rationale and an imperative for how to get the enterprises’ books back in order. In the process, semantics may also provide a basis for more productive management and increased valuations for enterprises as well.
The mystery of diverging value resides in the importance of information in an information economy. Unlike the historical and traditional ways of measuring a company’s assets — based on the tangible factors of labor, capital, land and equipment — information is an intangible asset. As such, it is harder to see, understand and evaluate than other assets. Conventionally, and still the more common accounting practice, intangible assets are divided into goodwill, legal (intellectual property and trade secrets) and competitive (know-how) intangibles. But — given that intangibles now equal or exceed the value of tangible assets in advanced economies — we will focus instead on the information component of these assets.
As used herein, information is taken to be any data that is presented in a form useful to recipients (as contrasted to the more technical definition of Shannon and Weaver [2]). While it is true that the there is always a question of whether the collection or development of information is a cost or represents an investment, that “information” is of growing importance and value to the enterprise is certain.
The importance of this information focus can be demonstrated by two telling facts, which I elaborate below. First, only five to seven percent of existing information is adequately used by most enterprises. And, second, the global value of this information amounts to perhaps a range of $2.0 trillion to $7.4 trillion annually (yes, trillions with a T)! It is frankly unbelievable that assets of such enormous magnitude are so poorly understood, exploited or managed.
Amongst all corporate resources and assets, information is surely the least understood and certainly the least managed. We value what we measure, and measure what we value. To say that we little measure information — its generation, its use (or lack thereof) or its value — means we are attempting to manage our enterprises with one eye closed and one arm tied behind our backs. Semantic approaches offer us one way, perhaps the best way, to bring understanding to this asset and then to leverage its value.
via Leveraging Intangible Assets Using Semantic Technologies AI3:::Adaptive Information.