[Video links will go live by mid to late December]

The most up-to-date reference for additional discussion of these ten ideas is My Value Creation Journey: An Autobiography of My Work, click here. Each idea below is explained in a short video which are best viewed in order.

These ideas evolved from a long and eclectic research career and constitute a way of thinking that deserves consideration as a foundation for business education.

My work can be put into two categories: knowledge building and finance. A comprehensive discussion of my finance work can be found in Value Creation Principles: The Pragmatic Theory of the Firm Begins with Purpose and Ends with Sustainable Capitalism.   

If the reader is unfamiliar with my work, then a viewing of the videos is essential to understand the basic thinking behind these ten ideas listed below and my terminology, e.g., “Knowledge Building Loop” and “life-cycle track record.”

The videos below will be integrated into the Certificate in Value Creation online course offered by the Madden Center for Value Creation at Florida Atlantic University.

#1 Click here for a video, Perceptions are Critical to Knowledge Building.

The Knowledge Building Loop emphasizes the role of past experiences in shaping our perceptions, which is consistent with how our brains evolved not to promote accuracy, but to promote survival.

#2 Click here for a video, The Knowledge Building Loop and the Wright Brothers.

The Knowledge Building spotlights the advantage of past experiences in facilitating new useful connections and the disadvantage by blocking new ways of seeing what could be.

#3 Click here for a video, Systems Thinking.

Systems thinking represents the interconnectedness of the parts while focusing on relationships and emergent properties. Systems thinking promotes reframing problems in creative ways that are not possible with linear cause-and-effect thinking.

 #4 Click here for a video, The Foundation for Business Education

There is merit in considering the foundation for business education to be the process for building knowledge which is reflected in the Knowledge Building Loop. The Loop promotes systems thinking and identifying assumptions that are no longer relevant or simply obsolete. 

#5 Click here for a video, Free to Choose Medicine.
Language has a pervasive influence in concealing assumptions while greatly simplifying the world—language is perception’s silent partner.

#6 Click here for a video, The Life-Cycle Framework Helps Users of Financial Statements.

Boards of directors and investors benefit from placing forecasts of future performance scenarios in the context of a firm’s, or a business unit’s, past life-cycle track record.

# 7 Click here for a video, The Life-Cycle Framework and Firm Performance.

The life-cycle framework provides insights about a firm’s history, identifies key value creation issues, illustrates how value creation is rooted in the long term, and suggests that business history studies would be far more useful if a firm’s long-term life-cycle track record was displayed.

#8 Click here for a video, The Pragmatic Theory of the Firm

The key to sustainable value creation is a culture that is deeply rooted in the four-part purpose of the firm and in knowledge-building proficiency.

#9 Click here for a video, Amazon and the Pragmatic Theory of the Firm.

The Pragmatic Theory of the Firm views the firm as a holistic system and positions maximizing shareholder value not as the purpose of the firm, but as the result of the firm successfully achieving its four-part purpose over the long term. 

#10 Click here for a video, Intangibles, Accounting, and Firm Performance.

The New Economy accounting system begins inside the firm with an ongoing learning process for intangibles, experimentation with the capitalization and amortization of intangibles, and more accurate life-cycle track records thereby improving resource allocation decisions.