Intangible Capital

A practical guide to leveraging hidden knowledge intangibles to fuel growth and innovation and add value to your business. Intangible Capital: Putting Knowledge to Work in the 21st-Century Organization is for every manager struggling to succeed and innovate in today's knowledge-based economy. This must-have handbook helps businesspeople build smarter, more successful companies by maximizing the knowledge that is already inside their organizations. Most businesspeople have heard of the growing importance of knowledge workers, information technology, innovation, networks, reputation, and performance management. Like no other guidebook, Intangible Capital shows how each of these trends fit into an overall discipline of intangibles management. The book takes the ten basic building blocks of traditional, industrial-era businesses and defines their knowledge-era equivalents—intangibles as the new raw material, intellectual capital (IC) as the new production line, IC assessment as the new balance sheet, and networks as the new organizational chart. This approach provides a clear road map for managers adapting to the realities of business today, one that helps translate the new world of the knowledge-based economy into understandable terms and ready-to-implement ideas.

Despite increasing research efforts, there is still much confusion regarding the nature and contribution of the most intangible forms of capital. This book develops a comprehensive and unifying conception of intangible capital in order to understand its role with respect to economic growth, well-being, and rationality. As the book illustrates, utilizing the intangible capital concept enables many new and important economic insights. Intangible capital is defined to include standard human capital, noncognitive human capital (including personal capital), social capital, and other intangible manifestations of human capacity. Understanding intangible capital is a key to realizing the full human potential of our economic systems. Explaining how the main components of intangible capital contribute to economic growth, this book will be of great interest to social scientists in the fields of heterodox, behavioural and social economics, social capital, HRM, and economic and organizational change. It will also be of considerable value to government policymakers and business managers interested in the role and implications of intangible capital and intangible assets for productivity, growth and the performance of firms. Philosophers and psychologists, among others, should find the chapters dealing with intangible capital in relation to well-being and rationality of particular interest.

Early in the twenty-first century, a quiet revolution occurred. For the first time, the major developed economies began to invest more in intangible assets, like design, branding, and software, than in tangible assets, like machinery, buildings, and computers. For all sorts of businesses, the ability to deploy assets that one can neither see nor touch is increasingly the main source of long-term success. But this is not just a familiar story of the so-called new economy. Capitalism without Capital shows that the growing importance of intangible assets has also played a role in some of the larger economic changes of the past decade, including the growth in economic inequality and the stagnation of productivity. Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake explore the unusual economic characteristics of intangible investment and discuss how an economy rich in intangibles is fundamentally different from one based on tangibles. Capitalism without Capital concludes by outlining how managers, investors, and policymakers can exploit the characteristics of an intangible age to grow their businesses, portfolios, and economies.

The highly experienced authors of the Guide to Intangible Asset Valuation define and explain the disciplined process of identifying assets that have clear economic benefit, and provide an invaluable framework within which to value these assets. With clarity and precision the authors lay out the critical process that leads you through the description, identification and valuation of intangible assets. This book helps you: Describe the basic types of intangible assets Find and identify intangible assets Provide guidelines for valuing those assets The Guide to Intangible Asset Valuation delivers matchless knowledge to intellectual property experts in law, accounting, and economics. This indispensable reference focuses strictly on intangible assets which are of particular interest to valuation professionals, bankruptcy experts and litigation lawyers. Through illustrative examples and clear modeling, this book makes abstract concepts come to life to help you deliver strong and accurate valuations.

Whether you call it "harvesting intangible assets" or "intellectual property management," organizations must make the most of everything they have to offer if they want to remain competitive. Yet, the majority of companies are oblivious to the wealth of revenue-producing opportunities hiding just below the strategic surface. In this thought-provoking book, author Andrew J. Sherman shares insights and expertise gleaned from his work with some of the world's leading companies who have capitalized on intellectual assets such as patents, trademarks, customer information, software codes, databases, business models, home-grown processes, and employee expertise. Featuring instructive examples from organizations including Proctor & Gamble, IBM, and Google, the book reveals how companies large or small can implement IP-driven growth and licensing strategies, foster a culture of innovation, turn R&D into revenue, and much more. Smart companies reap what they sow. This book gives readers the tools they need for a profitable harvest.

This paper measures the size of the stock of intangible capital in Canada using newly released data on the market value of all securities in the economy. The approach taken relies on a quantitative application of the q-theory of investment to generate the quantity of capital owned by firms. I find that the intangible capital stock accounted for approximately 30% of overall capital since 1994. Of this intangible capital stock, the R&D reported by national accounts makes up only 23%. In addition, the finding on the magnitude of the intangible capital stock is comparable to that reported using a cost approach, confirming the size and the relevance of intangibles to macroeconomic models.

'I had the privilege and pleasure of supervising the Ph.D. dissertation from which the present book originated. Its author, Beth Webster, was independent, critical in a positive way and original. She acquired a most thorough knowledge and mastery of the relevant literature. She recognized early on the growing importance, both qualitatively and quantitatively, of investment in intangible assets in modern economic processes. She set about developing an appropriate framework, drawing on Kalecki's insights in particular, within which to analyse the issues involved. The outcome is the present book - which is original, relevant, comprehensive and a pleasure to read.' - G.C. Harcourt, University of New South Wales, Australia

With the use of practical in-depth case studies and interviews with leading experts in the field, this book analyses the key elements in value creation in the new age. It provides practical guidance to organisations that will allow them to migrate successfully into an economy that demands new business models.