In a recent newsletter well renowned economist Fredmund Malik moans that after the crunch corporate bonus payment schemes for management staff are still ill designed.
Instead of being tied to short term earning a wider perspective should be adopted that also takes into account the long term evolution of the corporation.
This is however hard to measure and maybe even harder to execute than short term business optimisation strategies.

The very same problem we are facing in the security industry.
Security spending is commonly tagged as necessary evil. Spending less or nothing at all will cut cost and is thus the thing to do when the going gets tough in the market.
Products like netfence  that provide security, lower operational cost and help to significantly improve the corporate infrastructure would seem be the natural choice in times when security budgets get tight.  But the lemon principle firmly rules meaning that a "believed" cheap buy from a global brand is often regarded as the less risky albeit less promising option by many decision makers.

A key Darwinian selector throughout the next 24 months will be a corporation's ability to create better infrastructures in support of the core business  with lower budgets and often less staff. Surely hardly nobody believes that the cheap buy or doing nothing at all will effect this better infrastructure.

So it is not about brains but incentive and motivation.