Page 41 - Free the Idea Monkey

Here is the way Gail McGovern,
David Court, John Quelch and Blair
Crawford put it in a Harvard Business
Review article:

That’s an important point. When people discuss a company’s
share price, they love to talk about alliances and acquisitions as
ways to get the stock price up. Both of those things are glamorous,
but each is notoriously poor at generating greater shareholder value.

What does cause the share price to increase is a hot, original
product. Think about what happens to Apple’s shares every time it
announces something new. (Can you say iPod and iPhone and iPad?)
Is it any wonder then that many on Wall Street believe innovation is
the leading indicator of future growth and profitability? There’s even
an index fund that just invests in what it thinks are the country’s 20
most innovative companies.

And who makes all this innovation possible? Idea Monkeys.
They are very valuable critters. Just ask the folks on Wall Street and
their cousins, those who work in venture capital and private equity.
Recently, they, too, have discovered the power of the Monkey. In the
past, these companies followed the formula of:

Acquisition + Forced Efficiency = Profit

26 M E E T T H E I D E A M O N K E Y