Rainforest Economics

They don't call it the rainforest to trick you. There are lots of trees and, yip, plenty of rain in it. Dry season, my arse.

Anyway I'm being chased by 80 kg of enraged cassowary through razor sharp undergrowth in the middle of a torrential downpour. And as my life flashes before my eyes, all I can think about are intangible assets.

I blame it on the locale. The rainforests of Northern Queensland host a hugely diverse range of flora & fauna (some of it angry & mobile). The soil that supports it is however, not especially fertile. The nutrient base doesn't lie in the ground so much as cycle through the system in the form of trees, ferns, fungi, animals etc - it is "in play" rather than "in storage". If you get rid of this biomass (through logging or clearance), you are left with worthless sand that requires large quantities of fertiliser to grow anything on.

Which mirrors the situation with most of our organisations. In the industrial period, our assets were visible. Machinery, inventory, etc. If our assets are becoming increasingly intangible then they start to resemble rainforests more than traditional agricultural farmland. The value in our organisations is constantly "in play" and attempts at clearance can leave you with worthless scrub. I'm not going to push the metaphor to deal with fertiliser but there's plenty of that about as well.