Solvation

Forbes Article

An article in Forbes is making the rounds.  The idea is that there's a third type of production, informations that's created and shared in a commons.  I can't really comment on the economic placement that he is describing, though the ideas here are certainly highly relevant for valuing knowledge within the firm or the market.

This essay by Yochai Benkler, a Professor of Law at Yale Law School, explains.  A brief paper describes the Political Economy of Commons (5th on the list).

If you are interested in this, you might also be interested in Howard Rheingold's Cooperation Project.

About This Site

I believe that one of the major movements of this century will be to bring Accounting and Economic practices in line with beliefs about sustainability.  The idea that zero is a number is meant to represent the idea that by avoiding valuation of intangibles we implicitly value them at zero, which most people acknoweldge is not an accurate amount of worth.  Similarly, the idea that infinity is well-defined is meant to refer to the idea that while we think of "very big" as infinite, it's actually not.  An infinite ocean could actually absorb our effluent; a finite one actually can't.

"Full Spectrum Accounting" was chosen to allude to the revelation that was the concept of the electromagnetic spectrum, with the idea that we only account for the concretely measurable, just as we only could detect certain wavelengths as visible, but were blind to all else.

Please email me or post your comments or referrals of people whose work I might be interested in. If you, yourself, do research or work in the valuation of intangibles, are a financial analyst, controller, are affiliated with the SEC or FASB, or do work on economic indicators that incorporate sustainability, I'm particularly eager to know who you are and hear your thoughts.

I believe that one of the major movements of this century will be to bring Accounting and Economic practices in line with beliefs about sustainability.  The idea that zero is a number is meant to represent the idea that by avoiding valuation of intangibles we implicitly value them at zero, which most people acknoweldge is not an accurate amount of worth.  Similarly, the idea that infinity is well-defined is meant to refer to the idea that while we think of "very big" as infinite, it's actually not.  An infinite ocean could actually absorb our effluent; a finite one actually can't.

"Full Spectrum Accounting" was chosen to allude to the revelation that was the concept of the electromagnetic spectrum, with the idea that we only account for the concretely measurable, just as we only could detect certain wavelengths as visible, but were blind to all else.

Please email me or post your comments or referrals of people whose work I might be interested in. If you, yourself, do research or work in the valuation of intangibles, are a financial analyst, controller, are affiliated with the SEC or FASB, or do work on economic indicators that incorporate sustainability, I'm particularly eager to know who you are and hear your thoughts.