smarter companies
Tangible results from intangible capital
What's New
Trek principal Mary Adams to co-chair new intangibles advisory committee
We are happy to announce that Trek principal, Mary Adams, has been invited to co-chair a new Advisory Committee for the Athena Alliance, a think tank in Washington DC in the vanguard of identifying, understanding, analyzing, and educating on the information, intangibles, and innovation (I3 or I-Cubed) economy.
The mission of the Advisory Committee is to expand Athena Alliance’s understanding of the changes taking place in the US and global economy and to offer ways to meet the economic challenges arising from the emerging interconnected knowledge intensive world.
Other members of the Committee include:
- Andrew Sherman, Jones, Day (co-chair)
- Joe Dyer, iRobot
- Gabe Fried, Hilco Streambank
- Allen Howell, Corporate Flight Management
- John Hudson, Deloitte
- Don Kuratko, Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Indiana University
- Bob Laux, Microsoft
- Jim Malackowski, OceanTomo
For more information, please visit the Athena website and read the press release about the advisory committee
RepuStars and Beyond
Congrats to friend and colleague from IAFS Nir Kossovsky on the November 1 launch of the RepuStars® Variety Corporate Reputation Index by Dow Jones Indexes.
Increased attention to reputation is good for anyone interested in intangible capital management like I am.
Why is this?
People often think of reputation as tightly linked to marketing. Getting the message right is certainly part of the challenge. But no amount of effective messaging will make up for a poorly run company.
How do you get a good reputation? By managing your company well. And since 80% of the value of the average company today is intangible, managing your company well equals managing your intangibles well. And you can’t manage intangibles by keeping them mysterious and intangible–you do it by having in place measurement and management practices that enable you to get it right: [Read more...]
Thanksgiving Thoughts on Agriculture and the Knowledge Era
Thanksgiving celebrates a story that unites Americans around the idea of sharing (and being thankful) for the food and many blessings we enjoy. It harkens to an agricultural era that pre-dated the industrial era that marked much of our country’s history. So I thought this would be a good week to share a few thoughts on how agriculture has changed over the years—and how it will undergo many more changes as we shift to the knowledge era.
The systemization of agriculture made the industrial age possible, freeing workers from subsistence to production of goods.
And then the industrial age brought increased automation and “industrialization” to the sector. Today, agriculture is a perfect reflection of the design constraints and practices of the industrial era including large scale production and distribution as well as heavy use of machinery and chemicals. The underlying assumption was/is that mechanization should be used to replace human labor. In the industrial era, fuel consumption, greenhouse gases and other forms of pollution were not as important as they are becoming today.
Every day I read about exciting new developments in agriculture that reflect the new design constraints of our times and the new possibilities of the knowledge era. Here are a couple. [Read more...]
Knowledge is replacing technology as the key enabler of our economy – The case of agriculture
I talk a lot about the knowledge era. I specialize in the measurement, management and monetization of knowledge intangibles. I wrote a book on intangible capital. So what I am about to say shouldn’t be that big a surprise to me but it kind of is….
Technology is not as important as it used to be. [Read more...]
Institute of Management Accountants Event: Intangible Capital, the real value of a business
The NH Chapter of the Institute of Management Accountants is hosting Trek principals, Mary Adams and Michael Oleksak, at their February meeting.
From the event announcement:
Did you know that a balance sheet presented under U.S. generally accepted accounting principles can only explain 20% of the value of the average company? The rest is lumped together as “intangible.” Very little is known or understood about this hidden 80% of value, yet this information gap affects the ability of management teams everywhere to make the right decisions and drive growth performance, as well determine the true value of their company.
These intangibles reflect the shift of companies toward greater dependence on knowledge. These “unrecognized” intangibles include a broad range of capabilities and “assets” such as data, networks and processes that together make up the fundamental infrastructure of the modern business.
Management accountants have a unique opportunity to unlock the secrets of this hidden 80% of corporate value. This presentation will explain how you, as a management accountant, can be a valued partner to your fellow managers and peers in identifying, measuring and monetizing these critical intangibles. We will draw from the recent IMA Statement on Management Accounting entitled Unrecognized Intangibles: Identification, Management and Reporting and the book Intangible Capital: Putting Knowledge to Work in the 21st Century Organization, both co-authored by our speakers, Mary Adams and Michael Oleksak.
More information and registration
IT Management is Really IC Management
The KNOW Network just declared IT Departments Fail to Deliver Value based on a global survey of IT executives by Axios Systems. Here are a few of the data points they cite:
- 57% believe their systems do not deliver the value expected by the business
- 64% are unable to provide the business with real-time quantifiable metrics demonstrating the value of their services
- 39% believe that business decision-makers still do not understand the value IT brings to the business.
The reason that IT management is so hard is that it is so closely tied to IC management. And companies are doing an even worse job with IC than they are with IT. [Read more...]
A Quick Quiz: Do you have what it takes to realize the potential of a new innovation or IP asset?
We had a really fun opportunity offered to us late last year. It came from an unexpected source but we were thrilled to do it.
The opportunity was to build a “QuickScan” for business professionals to analyze the strength of a business opportunity. The request came from the folks at Transfer Pricing Associates, a global practice based in the Netherlands. They wanted to include this tool on their new site, IPR Plaza (worth checking out, it’s a great site)
Their offer was unexpected because most people dealing with intellectual property rights (IPR) have a very IP-centric view of business. So we were thrilled to work with people that understand the need to plan, build and monetize IP with a more holistic view.
We came up with a simple set of 20 questions that [Read more...]
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Check out our IP Management QuickScan
