Jay Cross

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Gird for complexity

Jay Cross

The value underpinning America’s public companies shifted from 80% tangibles — things you could see and touch — to 80% intangibles, invisible things like know-how, secret sauce, brand, and relationships. The clockwork jobs have been outsourced to low cost providers. Call it The Rise of Intangibles.

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Pope sells Vatican to Google

Jay Cross

Founded in 1792 by twenty-four brokers under a buttonwood tree at 68 Wall Street, this is where the rules for buying and selling bonds and shares of companies were drawn up and agreed upon. This is like Disney buying the Capitol or the Israelis buying Mecca. Unthinkable. That was then. Now speedy algorithms are replacing the brokers.

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Technical Knowledge and Practical Knowledge

Jay Cross

Outsourcing and automation have eliminated work that is merely complicated. Between 1980 and 2000, the value of the publicly traded companies flip-flopped from 80% tangible assets to 80% intangible assets. . Most of a company’s worth had been in hard assets: plant, equipment, and cash. It is nature. Caveat emptor.

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What About the Future?

Jay Cross

Royal Dutch Shell, the fifth largest company in the world and a long-term player (Shell’s more than a hundred years old), has been learning from scenarios for forty years. Many old-school companies think this is where they live. The customers are creating the data, this set-up can make companies more agile in responding to change.

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Succeed in business: mimic sardines

Jay Cross

Procedural work is being outsourced. Fourteen years ago Intel’s CEO likened his company to a car racing down the highway at 150 miles per hour. So what’s a company to do? That’s why the life-span of a Fortune 500 company has fallen below fifty years and the tenure of a Fortune 500 CEO below seven years. Cars are machines.

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Whose learning are you responsible for?

Jay Cross

These “pre-hires” can become familiar with the company before signing on. Furthermore, a company that doesn’t tap its community elders as coaches, mentors and guides is missing an important trick. Perhaps they work for an outsource provider. Companies can’t exist in isolation. Here’s the clue: Markets are conversations.

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Informal Learning 2.0

Jay Cross

Networks reduce transfer costs to zero, enabling companies to focus on what they do best while outsourcing what others can do better. Network connections are replacing rigidity with flexibility, penetrating internal boundaries and silos and obliterating the walls that have separated businesses from their customers.