If they then start to actually use that investment in some productive way that pays wages and earns a profit, then they start to generate additional value-added from that activity, and that value-added continues to be created as long as they keep doing that productivev activity.
But still, most firms found it hard to spot a value activity when it hit their factory floor.
Most of the brainy or so-called added-value activity still takes place at Longbridge.
If each and every activity of the value chain is gradually farmed out, what binds labor with management and stockholders?
These range from the number of calories burned in sexual activity to the value of physical education classes to the notion that burning 3, 500 extra calories leads mathematically to a one-pound weight loss.
For those that are worth doing, but not worth measuring , they agree to hold marketing accountable for testing-and-learning on ways to show, even if partially, how that activity connects to economic value.
The other half of the problem is that we are measuring the current activity, not the capital value.
More directly, there is a well-established valuation concept that present value of an activity is increased by anticipated future benefits.
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"We understand the difference between investing in an asset that has value and adds value to economic activity as opposed to general spending, " said Rich Studley, president of the Michigan Chamber of Commerce.
It started at the simplest of activities in the value chain, then, decision by decision, every time that Dell outsourced the next lowest-value-adding of the remaining activities in its business, Asus added a higher value-adding activity to its business.
Other recent studies suggest that, the big disasters of 1998-2001 aside, the value created by merger activity may actually have been underestimated by economists.
Care to estimate the current market cap value of all business activity related to relatively minor, taxpayer funded government spending that gave us computers, databases, the Internet and biotechnology?
It is the value added through economic activity.
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Most this activity does not sit at the core value of the Facebook business.
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The larger problem is that the threat of investigation and potential prosecution for successfully competing in high-tech markets almost certainly discourages innovative and competitive activity that antitrust laws are supposed to value.
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Archives are the by-products of human activity retained for their long-term historical value.
By producing vast quantities of it, backed by no real economic activity, it has reduced the meaning and value of each new and pre-existing ticket.
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Continually receiving meaningful value is a key trust building activity.
Most of that is sold by bigger players, those that have the large amounts of bonds outstanding needed for the trading activity that lets investors assess the "fair value" of the debt.
Perhaps what the Chinese managers saw, that outsiders in their enthusiasm missed, was that increasing inventive activity might well be the easiest part of successful innovation, and that it is indeed a less glamorous and more managerial long march to becoming able to realize the value associated with that increased inventive activity.
Anybody involved in cross-border activity will find that their assets and liabilities change value.
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As more streams of machine data become available, more activity can and will be tracked, and more potential value can be reaped from such data.
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Mr Simon believed that increased tree planting, entrepreneurial activity and cheaper substitutes would result in a decline in its value.
Monetarists are willfully blind to the latter reality, and presume that money of indeterminate and volatile value (and rising quantity) actually boosts economic activity.
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They also recommend that new technologies, such as microarray analysis of gene activity, be used by regulators alongside conventional assessments of nutritional value and toxicity.
The broad value of machine data is that it tracks micro activity that can then be used to detect larger trends or to track specific flows of activity.
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The focus is on value-in-use from collaboration around an activity.
The private activity bonds for American Airlines are now trading around their full face value.
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The energy sector continues to see merger and acquisition activity (See a previous discussion in Case Study: Buyouts Crystallize Value in the Market).
And industrial production and factory use levels are gaining, retail activity is perking up, and durable goods orders are rising, says Value Line.
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