Data Driven Decisions

Chapter 35Introduction

We are now entering the third and final Part of this book. Until now, we have discussed intangible assets, what they mean, how they are measured, and how businesses, investors, and owners can use them to create a competitive advantage. We reviewed tools that are part of a systems engineering pedagogy. These tools can be used by executives, business owners, and investors to understand and identify intangible assets. We then reviewed several case studies that indicated how intangible assets – whose presence can be shown by the tools – impact capital markets and investment banking transactions.

We are going to take a pivot now to a seemingly new subject. The purpose of this Part is to be highly practical and almost entirely market driven. We are going to review macroeconomic perspectives on how these intangible assets can articulate themselves in a specific market.

I own a business that specializes in North America, Latin America, the Middle East, North Africa, and Southeast Asia; therefore, I have chosen these regions and these economies to analyze the intangible assets and the systems engineering principles and how they influence each other.

This Part is designed to be example driven. The utility of the intangible assets and the systems engineering tools we have talked about is not directly overlaid or directly applicable on a one‐to‐one basis with each of the following regional discussions. However, the reason I include this macroeconomic perspective ...