Kean Birch — Rethinking Value in the Bio-economy: Finance, Assetization, and the Management of Value
28 published claims from this book.
- Accounting for biological assets reflects chosen methods, not intrinsic biological qualities
- Accounting practices involve interpretation and are not straightforwardly performative
- An asset is property yielding an income stream, unlike a commodity for sale.
- Analyzing bio-economy value requires focusing on assets rather than commodities
- Asset value derives from future earnings rather than intrinsic commodity value
- Asset value is actively managed, including downward, and its constructedness is obscured.
- Asset value is constituted by active management within organizations, not by biological properties.
- Assetization of IP reduces incentives to develop actual products
- Bio-economy valuation practices are not peculiar to that sector.
- Biotech firms can be valued as strategic acquisitions, not for their revenue
- Capitalization builds the thing being valued at the same time it appraises that thing
- Capitalization scholarship often treats capital as a living thing embodied in commodities.
- In the bioeconomy, informational signaling about assets, not product sales, constitutes firm value.
- Intangible asset value is constituted by intermediary actors who represent investors.
- Life science firm value is managed through strategic information release.
- Life sciences firms may never produce products, so valuation is prospective rather than embodied
- Listed firms’ value depends on sustained investor relationship building.
- Market makers profit from the buy-sell spread by providing liquidity.
- Monopoly rent discounts the future in favor of the past
- Over a third of UK listed biotech firms collapsed after the 2008 financial crisis.
- The VC-to-IPO model dominates bio-economy discourse but not actual financing
- Understanding value as assetization requires analyzing political economy, not just applying STS to finance.
- Understanding value requires studying the assets underpinning firm valuation, not commodity production.
- Value in the bio-economy is better theorized through assetization than commodification.
- Value in the bio-economy is managed through asset governance, not product sales.
- Value in the bio-economy is produced through valuation practices, not intrinsic to biological matter.
- Value is constituted by knowledge and practice, not merely hype.
- Value is not inherent in things but achieved through capitalization practices.