| Cracking the Value Code: How Successful Businesses Are Creating Wealth in the New Economy | 
 enlarge | Authors: Barry D. Libert, Steve M. Samek, Richard E. S. Boulton
Publisher: Collins
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 1134020
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.7 x 6.3 x 1.2
ISBN: 0066620635
Dewey Decimal Number: 658
EAN: 9780066620633
ASIN: 0066620635
Publication Date: May 2000
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Product Description
How Can Your Company Crack The Value Code? The authors of this book suggest an answer.Organizations thrive or fail based on how they design, invest in, and manage their entire portfolios of value for your company in the New Economy? Cracking the Value Code lays out four easy-to-understand steps to help enterprise, manage your company as a portfolio of assets, and use information to measure and report all your assets. What to do differently and how to do it is the focus of this book. The authors' mission is to help you see, invest in, manage, and measure all of what matters in the New Economy.
Amazon.com Review
It seems some guru with a PalmPilot reminds us daily of the current breach between our Old and New economies, with immense riches awaiting those who play by the rules of the New, and certain oblivion looming for those who disdain such tidings. Come to think of it, that's essentially what Cracking the Value Code says. At the heart of this rigorously researched, cogently argued, and sensibly organized manifesto is this: New Economy success stories like Charles Schwab, Microsoft, and the Gap have outstripped their older industrial-age counterparts because they have devised new business models that hook into "what matters" to customers. How? By using their organizational assets--both concrete and intangible--as the building blocks to true customer value. The book examines the full gamut of these possible assets (physical, financial, employee-supplier, customer, and those intrinsic to the organization) and, to show them in action, provides plenty of fun, fact- and figure-filled miniprofiles of New Economy dynamos, from robustly reengineered old warhorses like IBM, Coke, Pepsi and Sara Lee to brash, new digital-age brats: Dell, Compaq, Cisco, idealab!, and Starbucks. The book, which is based on a three-year study by the consulting firm Arthur Andersen, gives clear, plain-English guidance for helping your organization identify, create, and consolidate the valued assets it needs to vault high above the competition. Each chapter ends with questions and actions you can directly apply to your own workplace, and an entire section is devoted to helping your company add value by stressing assets and build a new business model that reflects those central strengths. So if you want the smart tip from one of the world's most influential consultants on exactly what companies are doing or have done to put themselves on the international market radar, you'll eat this book up. And if you're looking to reposition your biz for unprecedented market success by cracking your own value code, you might even come back for seconds and thirds. --Timothy Murphy
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| Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...
 Lacks Depth January 14, 2003
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Summary:
Arthur Andersen's Value Dynamics framework, published in the book Cracking the Value Code: How Successful Businesses Are Creating Wealth in the New Economy, differentiates the firm from other consultants who continue to use methods that focus only on tangible assets. The "Value Dynamics Framework" provides a context for viewing the ways that organizations create value by combining and recombining different types of assets. This book is about what creates value for businesses and the customers they serve. The core of this book is about the expansion of the meaning of traditional sources of wealth --- land (physical assets), labor (employee and supplier assets), and capital (financial assets) --- and the addition of customer and organizational assets. The main theme that the authors are trying to get across is that while conventional accounting practices only encompass tangible assets in the balance sheet, it is important to recognize and leverage on the intangible assets that are largely ignored. The authors' reports are based on the results of consulting experience and studies from their position as partners with Arthur Andersen. The authors provide with some really interesting examples and case studies. For example how to quantify ability to assimilate new companies and new technologies (which Microsoft tends to do so well)? Or how to quantify customer and employee loyalty? One of the interesting concepts of this book is using the customer as an asset. This book uses the example of Charles Schwab and its amazing ability to attract and retain customers. It also delves into the critical element of replenishment cost. The authors draw analogy of the five assets of an organization to that of the DNA on the basis of four amino acids. The five assets namely Physical, Financial, Organizational, Labor and Customer are the main key areas where the author wants to generate value. This book highlights the need to acknowledge intangible assets such as leadership and creates a framework according to, which these intangibles can be assessed. While stimulating and thought provoking, this book unfortunately has some week points. While examples emphasize successful management of one or more assets and do a good job in showing how this might lead to the market success, it doesn't show that other companies failed by neglecting and trying to do the same thing. Another weak point stems from the intangible use of one of the themes - that the five assets discussed represent a kind of DNA code for business. It is never clarified how the processes used by DNA to reproduce itself or to evolve over the time are analogous in any way to the processes by which firms turns combinations of assets into profits. I think the analogy on the surface is ostentatious. In conclusion, the authors write in an enjoyable consultant style manner with many real world examples as its strength, spread over a wide array of topics like a sheet of frozen ice but lacks depth.
 Albeit simple, a transparent marketing ploy February 25, 2001
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
I read this book with great enthusiasm because I concur with the authors premise. Namely, to be successful in the future, companies must effectively, measure, report, and manage their intangible assets. However, while attempting to offer sage advice, the authors support their theory with a colorful series of pseudo-case studies that are, at best, dated information and, at worst, incomplete. For example, the authors position Priceline.com, Lucent Technologies, ... as examples of "thought and practice leaders" in the new economy. One only needs to look at their collective stockprices over the past year to see that these companies have not avoided powerful downward market realities. Even the oft cited darling of Wall Street, FDX Corporation, is included as a "technology leader" with their package tracking system serving as their "single greatest competitive advantage." This simply ignores the reality that United Parcel Service (UPS) their biggest competitor delivers and electonically tracks more parcels around the world in one day than FDX does in one week. What gives? In the end, the authors offer some "structure" for how to optimize your intangible assets...the kicker is that when you ask the question "How do I do it for my company?" you are left with a most unsatisfying "it depends." In effect, the folks at Andersen leave you with their business cards and suggest that you call them so they can figure it out for you.
 Good job and buono fortuna with your work! August 24, 2000
6 out of 11 found this review helpful
Well done. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the dynamics of enterprise value today. The book is seriously under valued (priced) for the IP it offers the reader. What a bargin?It flows well and offers insight into the thinking of valuation beyond a formula approach, plug-it-in software programs and hobbiest appraisers. AA&Co. hits a home run with the publication of this work.
Great Idea -- poor execution July 18, 2000
9 out of 15 found this review helpful
This book is not for someone who wants to understand what it takes to understand and implement an eCommerce business plan or channel. The book is filled with bland examples, limited detail, and few conclusions. If you are looking to actually crack the value code and make the tough decisions necessary to compete in the digital economy. This one is not it. Save your money and save your time.Sorry to be so harsh, but the book doesn't live up to the repuation of a big company like AA !
Oversimplified July 5, 2000
15 out of 16 found this review helpful
The core concept the authors are trying to drive home is that while conventional accounting practices list only the tangible assets in the balance sheet, it is important to recognize and leverage on the intangible assets that are largely ignored.Data collected from over 10000 companies, empirical evidence shows the progressive decrease in the ratio of book value to market value of companies. It is also shown that for companies that created most of the wealth in a very short span, this ratio is the lowest; as low as 0.03 in some. This is attributed to the recognition of intangible assets of the new economy companies that are not reported in the balance sheet but recognized by the stock market. It is then argued that in order to add value and create wealth , companies need to adopt a strategy to optimize the use of all their assets - Physical, Financial, Organizational, Customer and Employee & Customer assets. The book defines each of these assets and a small case study is presented as to how a particular company succeeded in creating value using each of these assets. An analogy is drawn to the understanding of DNA on the basis of four amino acids. These five assets seem to be those with which the authors want to crack the code of creating value and wealth and these assets are the "business genome". The framework that evolves is termed as "Value Dynamics". I was keenly looking forward for a methodology that would enable a quantitative analysis. Maybe I can find it in the next edition! The use of Information Technology to measure and report what needs to be measured appears as a summary in the last chapter. Albert Einstein as quoted in this book had rightly said "Sometimes what counts can't be counted and what can be counted doesn't count".
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