Kofax is being run by Bish, the founder of its biggest competitor – Captiva, now owned by EMC.

What kind of person would want to be the CEO of his own biggest competitor, after building his company (Captiva) up from scratch and then selling to EMC? Fundamentally, this is a guy who feels he has a lot to prove about his own greatness. Someone who doesn’t really care about the products or the people that form the company. Because, he believes that HE is the real value driver.

What message does it send, moving from the company you built from the bottom up to its biggest competitor? Most people I’ve spoken with say that it suggests that, “Reynolds Bish as CEO is the competitive differentiator,” not the products, not the people.

And this might just be true, though whether it will provide a sustainable advantage remains very much in quqestion.

Since the board ushered Bish in, a steady flow of the best and the worst employees have left the company, with many more to follow as Cowboy Bish has a havit of wrangling with local employment laws like a real rodeo man.

The Corporate Directors Forum, like economists and pundits worldwide, like to look backwords and base decisions on old data points. But, as Henry Ford said, “History is bunk.” Giving a guy like Bish an award like this at a time like this shows that both the CDF and Bish are fossils in a fast moving global marketplace. Moving forward, sustainable practices and the overall good of society (local to global) must be baked in to corporate strategy and FOSSILS like Bish will go the way of the dinosaur: extinct.