会计外文翻译转型经济中的研发和企业绩效文档格式.docx

1、D has evolved well beyond basic discounted cash flow models. Better tools have been developed to value intellectual capital, including the quantitative assessment of the value added by R&D. The dissection of the elements of risk and the application of real options theory are new features of the R&D

2、landscape. Financing vehicles have also changed with an enormous surge of venture capital and private equity funds. The analysts toolbox has been enhanced by electronic spreadsheets, on-line databases, Monte Carlo software, the Internet, and the ubiquitous personal computer.Industrial R&D is charact

3、eristically a high-risk investment with a deferred payoff. Its importance to industrial societies, and to individual firms within these economies, is paramount；Lau has estimated that more than 50% of the wealth creation in developed countries originates from technology, which is typically a product

4、of R&D. However, R&D comes at a cost, and it is as capable of destroying value as creating it. Knowing the difference is crucial; the penalties for underinvestment can be a deteriorating competitive position and lost opportunity; for overinvestment it will be a slow erosion of the firms capital base

5、.But measuring the difference between value creation and value destruction is not easy. One source of confusion is that accounting conventions treat R&D as an expense, not an investment. An even more fundamental issue is that past performance is not a reliable guide to future performance.Faced by a

6、measurement problem that is both difficult and important, the business financial and academic communities have continued improving their tools. As a result, R&D analysis and management has evolved dramatically in the past fifty years （3）, and that evolution is far from over.In its first postwar phas

7、e, industrial R&D was viewed as a creative enterprise andIts management was left to the R&D directors. Their main financial metric was an annual budget （a tool basically inadequate to evaluate an investment）. The budget was in part determined by industry benchmarks, such as R&D expense as a percenta

8、ge of revenues. Accordingly, the financial skills of R&D executives were largely focused on cost accounting and cost control （4）.In many companies, top management（often lacking personal experience in R&D）didnt have a clue about the relationship of value to cost, and attempted to manage the function

9、by a process that has been pithily described（5）as “managing the manager”. In other words, poor R&D returns were viewed more as a product of poor management than a consequence of a firms strategy .The solution was often to hire a “new boy.”The second phase, in the 1970s, was the introduction of incre

10、asingly powerful tools for evaluating investments under risk being adopted by financial analysts to R&D, leading to a circumstance I would describe as “the apparent triumph of DCF （Discounted Cash Flow）.”The use of DCF in evaluating investments was an important step forward in that it introduced the

11、 discipline of business plans, factored in the concept of risk, and helped bridge the communications gap between technical and non-technical executives. The DCF toolkit included net present value （NPV） internal rate of return （IRR） and risk weighted cost of capital.” But as it was applied in practic

12、e, the use of excessive discount rates and overly conservative terminal values combined to condemn almost any long-term R&D. project. This result contradicted industrys common experience that many of the most profitable innovations had long gestation periods.The word value has become a fixture of th

13、e business lexicon during the past two decades. Unfortunately, this omnipresent word is being used in two very different contexts: economic value and market value. The two forms of value are not at all the same. The distinction is profound for R&D, because innovation initially comes at a cost ion ec

14、onomic value, but is equally often a driver for market value!Economic ValueThe term Economic Value is invoked in much current business jargon, explicitlyIn such concepts as Economic Value Added （EVA）, and implicitly in discussions of “value chains,” and “value propositions.” The economic value of an

15、 enterprise is determined by the projected sum of its free cash flows, discounted by its cost of capital. The EVA concept, although traceable to Albert P. Sloan, the legendary CEO of General Motors, was reintroduced to the corporate community by the firm Stern Stewart in the 1990s, with considerable

16、 impact. EVA is defined as net operating profit minus an appropriate charge for the opportunity cost of all capital invested in theEnterprise. （The relationship between EVA and Economic Value is simple: EconomicValue is just the sum of the EVAs added by the enterprise in each successive year.）EVA is

17、 an estimate of true “economic profit,” or the amount by which earnings exceed or fall short of the required minimum rate of return that shareholders and lenders might earn by investing in alternative securities of comparable risk.The Crisis in Valuation; When Market Value Didnt TrackMarket Value Fo

18、r professional investors in securities, the bottom line is not economic return, it is total shareholder return （TSR）, defined as the appreciation of the stock price plus dividend payments. This is “cash is king” reasoning, since liquid securities and cash dividends mean cash to an investor. To money

19、 managers, total return is also their report card. In such a world, the Market Value of a stock is the final metric, and Economic Value is but one component of it. Investors also gauge each firms strategic position, plus other factors contributing to Market Value such as investor sentiment and macro

20、economic trends. Shareholder value has largely come to be synonymous with current market value-stock price-and executives or directors who ignore this reality do so at considerable peril.Economic Value A part of the crisis in valuation arose from the growing differences between market value and the

21、accountants perspective of valuation based on historical cost. While this circumstance could, in principle, have resulted from smart management delivering superior cash flows, this explanation did not hold up when the actual cash flow projections of the companies were considered. Young is based on c

22、ash flow anticipated in the next five years-the outer limit of the proverbial “short-term”. Thus, more than 75 percent of the valuation of the total stock market must be related to something other than short-term economic value. In this scenario, as long as perceptions of opportunity grew faster tha

23、n economic capital, the growth sector would outperform the “value” sector, and hence would attract more investment. This cascade effect would result in higher price-earnings ratios, since the price-to-earnings metric is tied to current economic performance. That is what occurred in the marketplace d

24、uring the decade of the 1990s.Investors in effect equated investment in ”value” stocks as investment in stocks with limited opportunities, and favored the ”growth” sector.During the 1990s, as the valuation gap was growing, a host of articles began to extend the venerable concept of intellectual prop

25、erty to the concept of intellectual orKnowledge capital, which added an important new dimension to intangible assets. Some writers even choose to define intellectual capital as the difference between market value and the value of the tangible assets. This approach is exemplified by this quotation: T

26、he greatest challenge facing any organization today is in understanding the huge differential between its balance sheet and market valuation. This gap represents the core value of the company its Intellectual Capital.From this traditional base, the concept was now extended to include the knowledge o

27、f the organization and its employees, and its ability to learn. It thus went far beyond the more limited concepts of know-how and trade secrets. Most importantly, there was recognition that intellectual and human capital could far outweigh tangible capital for valuation purposes.This insight was imp

28、ortant, but yet not very definitive. But the idea of intellectual capital is a new one,” wrote P.H. Sullivan ,”it brings to the foreground the brainpower assets of the organization, recognizing them as having a degree of importance comparable to the traditional land, labor, and tangible assets. If a

29、 survey were conducted, there would be agreement that many modern companies are filled with intellectual capital: law firms, consulting firms, software companies, computer companies to name but a few. But if the survey went on to ask people to define what intellectual capital is, there would be a wi

30、de range of answers. These answers would not converge onto one straightforward definition of intellectual capital, but rather on many. The range of views and the number of terms used to describe and define intellectual capital are broad, without a clear focus, and often confusingTechnology appraisal

31、A practical application of the economic value approach to intellectual property developed considerably during the 1990s.It has been termed technology appraisal. The approach is basically a DCF valuation of a pro forma business plan incorporating the technology being appraised .Technology appraisal h

32、as been used primarily for tax purposes: for example, the valuation of patents donated to universities by companies such as Dow Chemical or the valuation of in-process R&D in mergers and acquisitions. DuPont published a detailed description of typical technology appraisal methodology in connection with the completion of its acquisitions of Pioneer International and DuPont Merck. A number of consultants and accounting firms now offer technology appraisal services.New trends in corporate finance, and a new toolkit, are naturally to be expected to