Symbols (like a brand) are valuable indicators. Some symbols tell us that the environment that businesses operate in has profoundly changed. Netscape is a good example. It is a symbol of great corporate value creation (and new risk) enabled by the introduction of the browser. The term Web 2.0 and the Facebook/Microsoft deal are symbols of the new environment that has emerged since mid-2004 when broadband over took dial up.

Examination and discussion of these symbols is the preoccupation of a lot of great bloggers. Who did what deal? What one ego said about another? The death pool mentality … that benefits from the energies of risk takers, but also may stifle some. It is too bad that Randal Graves was right, “There’s nothing more exhilarating than pointing out the shortcomings of others, is there?”.

Dwelling on the symbols can only take us so far in changing corporate management and dealing with the complexities of an “inflection point” for business that is the result of so many factors that challenge us in so many different ways.

Social Capital Value Add is designed to focus the attention and efforts of investors, managers and their agents beyond the symbols towards building out corporate social networks that are maximized for social capital.

Over the first 20 posts or so of this blog, we’ll introduce the SCVA argument with short pithy little gems like this.