Has the time come to look for the loose change?

We have a little, fake treasure-chest sitting on our kitchen bench where we put our coins in.

I occasionally empty my wallet into it; husband clears out pockets there when doing the laundry.

When the month drags out a bit too long for our liking and all the cards have run dry, we dip into the box and use up the coins.

Despite of some serious cycles of ‘booms and busts’ I’ve had the privilege to observe within my working time of over 2 decades and hundreds of companies forming and failing on mass through these, AEC as an industry never was forced to go on a genuine search for ‘the hidden coins’.

In good times, everyone had a piece of the pie even if not in proportion with their abilities/performance.

In bad times small companies disappeared, larger merged into bigger ones and the reduced pie got shared to those closest to it. Everyone felt the pinch and was supposedly tightening the belt, still at the industry level, no real attempts have been made to improve efficiency.

The fortunes of participants of AEC-projects were driven by a combination of factors not easily identifiable, nor separately analysed, murkiness was (and by-and-large still is) the name of the game.

A couple of coins here-or-there could make no difference to most.

Not even when combined into a coin-tower.

I am a big fan of clever stop-motion movies; see one relevant to the topic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsOaTEouwpA&feature=relmfu