My Mission

Dr Stephen Covey makes the point that "the key to the ability to change is a changeless sense of who you are, what you are about, and what you value." Hence, "who am I, what am I all about, and what do I value?" These are all good questions.

For years now, I've tried to guide my actions and decisions based upon an integrated and comprehensive understanding of my beliefs, values, knowledge, experiences, motives, and drives -- what some might call a "mission statement." Here is my mission as it appears in a framed version that stands on my desk:

• I am MY OWN MAN. I choose how to LIVE my life. I take RISKS and accept RESPONSIBILITY. I have a right to be HAPPY.

• I am a LEARNER. I seek to UNDERSTAND life and the universe. EXISTENCE is instructive.

• I make INTEGRITY a guiding principle in my affairs. I am impeccable to my WORD and strive for ACHIEVEMENT. I avoid taking things PERSONALLY, and resist making ASSUMPTIONS about people.

• I respect POWER and understand how KNOWLEDGE, WEALTH, and VIOLENCE affect me. I practice INNOVATION, IMPROVISATION, and ADAPTABILITY.

• I match PROFIT to PRINCIPLE in the conduct of business. I promote ENTERPRISE amongst STAKEHOLDERS. I foster and nurture COLLEGIALITY within my domains.

• I am FRUGAL. I seek to get the most VALUE from my time and the things I have the use of. I invest for my ESTATE and use it to pursue a LIFESTYLE of fitness and growth.

• I practice CHIVALRY. I have COMPASSION for the innocent. I MENTOR deserving talent along the way and give the CREDIT to those who deserve it.

• I live in the LIGHT and fear the darkness. I understand the difference between REALITY and delusion. I believe TRUTH prevails over lies.

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Ternary Capital Structure

In this occasional paper, I discuss the emergence of structural capital as the ternary equivalent to human and financial capital. The paper describes the current state of structural capital as part of a larger intellectual capital framework.

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About Vantage

Executives activate enterprise by vectoring human, financial, and structural capital resources through operating, investment, and financing decisions. The quantum resultant of these vectors is generally reported through proxy measures such as profitability, capability, capacity, market share, influence, and perspective. The ternary interrelationship of human, financial, and structural capital to their whole can be depicted influentially as shown below, and requires from management ever more advanced concepts and methods in order to achieve and sustain competitive advantage in the global marketplace. The stakes in these decisions are high. For individuals, such decisions generally affect financial freedom, which in turn leads to time and relationship freedom. Organizationally, they determine the fulfillment of stakeholder needs, wants, and expectations. The essence of enterprise lies within the topography of this framework.

Financial capital is the sum of the depreciation, amortization, depletion, rent, interest, and maintenance expenses associated with holding or using commoditized financial assets (both tangible and intangible). Human capital is the sum of wages, benefits, commissions, and other expenses associated with employing people (i.e., those who go home at night). Structural capital is what remains after accounting for the financial and human capital of the firm.

While the competition between financial and human capital has been the subject of classical and neoclassical economic debate, ad nauseam, it is the emerging recognition of structural capital as the ternary equivalent to these traditional capital forms that provides the vantage point for visualizing the topological landscape which stands guard before the vista of strategic success.

Patterns of Beauty in Finance

This is an occasional paper I released arguing that there is beauty in the patterns discovered by financial economists that transcends symbolism and nominalism in what only the mind can understand within its conceptual space.

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Towards Matching Profit to Principle: Pricing Matters

This is a short editorial essay I submitted to We > Me in March 2007, arguing that capitalism must seek to match profit to principle if the world community and global enterprise are to thrive together in our modern times.

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Critical Modeling Strategy

In this occasional paper, I promote critical thinking by modelers in finance and accounting. In particular, I argue that reliability and validity checks are integral to the business modeling process.

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New Approaches to Finance and Accounting

In this occasional paper, I discuss the issues affecting accounting reform from the perspective of the stakeholders, including investors, management, regulators, academia, and the accounting profession itself. My conclusions argue for future reforms in accounting and finance, irregardless of the untimely nature of such reforms on all stakeholders.

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Isoquantal Capital Modulation: A Harmonic Modeling Approach to Understanding and Managing the Investment Decision

My doctoral dissertation where I argue that the purpose of business is to employ capital factors in such a manner as to generate value for its customers and profits for its owners. To achieve these ends, management must make at least three distinct decisions -- the operating, investment, and financing decisions. The purpose of this study is to formulate a modeling methodology that harmonically analyzes and explains how the investment decision and capital elasticity influence competitive advantage. The research explores the descriptive literature for the current states of computational modeling, accounting theory and practice, managerial finance, macroeconomics, capital theory, and harmonic analysis in order to provide evidence supporting the content validity of a proposed modeling framework, which encodes, modulates, and transforms raw financial data into waveforms suitable for harmonic analysis. The framework is operationalized algebraically, translated into a high-level computational language, and subsequently tested using simulation methods in order to analyze the computational robustness of the implementation. Finally, empirical testing shows a significant correlation exists between the model's reported results and the profitability of sole proprietorships in the U.S. providing initial evidence of the framework's construct validity. Additional empirical testing shows that the relationship between the model's reported results and net profitability is stronger than results returned from the use of raw capital magnitudes providing evidence of the model's positive capacity for recommending decisions. The study uses extant financial data obtained from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which maintains and releases Federal tax information extracted from its archives into the public domain through its Statistics of Income (SOI) programs.

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The Vantage Point

If tired of trees I seek again mankind,

Well I know where to hie me—in the dawn,

To a slope where the cattle keep the lawn.

There amid lolling juniper reclined,

Myself unseen, I see in white defined

Far off the homes of men, and farther still,

The graves of men on an opposing hill,

Living or dead, whichever are to mind.

And if by moon I have too much of these,

I have but to turn on my arm, and lo,

The sun-burned hillside sets my face aglow,

My breathing shakes the bluet like a breeze,

I smell the earth, I smell the bruisèd plant,

I look into the crater of the ant.

~ Robert Frost

Robert Lee Frost (1874–1963)