Valuing Technology: The New
Science of Wealth in the Knowledge Economy
How do you value e-business?
Since IT now consumes over
half of new capital investment in US firms, the central question facing senior management
investing in knowledge intensive businesses is, "how do you value e-business?"
This book takes a financial perspective on the new economy and addresses many of the
problems that are a part of the financial structure of the new economy. Valuing Technology
offers methods for determining the financial valuation of investments made in technology
in New Economy businesses. Companies in genomics, proteomics, nanotechnology, robotics,
and other highly technical fields require huge up-front costs and often experience other
idiosyncrasies of high-tech business. This book covers those angles and more, helping
readers accurately valuate modern e-businesses. It provides comprehensive analysis of
emerging valuation techniques for New Economy companies and it clearly explains how
financial assessment techniques are adapting to high-tech companies.
Human genomics, proteomics,
robotics, nanotechnology, fractals, ecoforming, global information networks, telemedicine
- the list goes on and on. These are the exciting new sciences that will propel our next
technology boom. Each creates value from novel, vast, and complex bodies of knowledge.
Each demands an array of business models predicated on the knowledge economy. At present,
only a handful of experts in their respective areas even understand these sciences; and
only a fraction of these experts have either the inclination or the insight to create
viable businesses from these knowledge-intensive technologies.
The collapse of dot-corn
stock prices left the investment community wondering how they could have got Internet
stock values so wrong. Yet relatively "simple" Internet technology pales next to
the hyperintelligent computing, complex interactions, and enormous databases seen in
genomics, proteomics, and other emerging technologies.
This book identifies the four
major trends in business and economics that are emerging in the knowledge economy, and
describes how each has changed the simple accounting for wealth and value creation to a
complex economics of knowledge. The last part of the book lays out the framework and
challenges facing a new science of valuation for knowledge-Intensive businesses that will
help investors, managers and advisors separate the future giants of the knowledge economy
from their failed contemporaries,
"Westland does a
masterful job of summarizing the weaknesses of traditional approaches to valuation as
applied to the information age, and provides an innovative framework for improvement. The
book is a must-read for anyone doing business in the emerging economy."
John Leslie King Dean,
University of Michigan School of Information
340 pages