Ask any CFO what happens when a factory machine, a truck, or a software license gets used every day, and they will give you the standard accounting answer: It depreciates. It wears down, loses value, and eventually gets written off.
Now ask that same CFO how they balance sheet a multi-partner AI network, a shared data infrastructure, or a collaborative industry ecosystem.
They will apply the exact same logic. They will mark it down as an operational cost or let it depreciate.
Also how many times have you found your development project, full of promise get stopped because of funding questions and that constant questioning of “where is the return of investment” yet the promise, learning and exploring new avenues of intelligence have all been deemed as a full cost and fully depreciated, not recognised for their future value of the knowledge gained
This is a massive financial paradox.
Enterprises are pouring billions into artificial intelligence, multi-actor alliances, and dynamic supply chains, yet they evaluate these investments using accounting rules invented during the Second Industrial Revolution. We are running 21st-century intelligent ecosystems on financial models built for factories and accounted for with rules invented during the Second Industrial Revolution.