As for filtering, even though China is using ever more sophisticated software (much of it provided by American firms), clever users can defeat it.
To devise "conduct remedies" to restrain a firm as clever and as aggressive as Microsoft, without the need for constant and intrusive policing, may be impossible.
But he argues that the firm's clever management team, which includes former Google executives, can navigate these perilous seas because it is well prepared for legal and regulatory battles.He points out that Tencent, a Chinese internet giant, expanded abroad successfully in part because its general counsel is a seasoned Silicon Valley lawyer.
Recording record profits year after year for your shareholders surely helps, but so does the firm's clever co-optation strategy.
Investors are now looking for firms using clever technology, rather than just a clever business model, to differentiate themselves.
When a musician releases a new album or goes on tour, old songs are streamed more too, says Daniel Glass, who runs a music label.The internet can also help firms become cleverer.
So what is a firm with a clever, new gene-sequencing technology to do in order to make a splash?
In the end, Google's search results and its text-based online advertisements are relevant to users only because the firm has devised clever ways to sift through them, says Hal Varian, the firm's chief economist.
He has said himself that if WestLB fails to reach its targets by 2007, it will be time for it to find another boss.When he arrived, the bank was reeling from a private-equity scandal in which shoddy supervision had led to loony investments in British cinemas, a TV rental firm called Box Clever, and a new Wembley sports stadium.
Full disclosure early in trials might indeed make it harder for firms to protect clever new ideas.
