New Superpowers - Emerging Frontiers for Process

This week I have been talking about structural capital–the superpower of today’s organization. And process is one of the most important and least understood in terms of its importance and its sustained value to an organization.

Most internal processes in today’s organizations already have been automated to one degree or other. There are software programs for accounting, enterprise resource management, risk management, human resources management, performance management, and many, many others. That doesn’t mean that this automation is complete. Quite to the contrary, companies at every level still have a multitude of opportunities to standardize, automate and optimize most internal processes in today’s organizations.

And there are also new horizons where automation has only just begun: backward through the supply chain and forward in customer-facing systems. Read more

Let’s stop guessing and start counting intangible investments

I just posted a comment on an IAM blog post about Intangible Value and the Herd Instinct. It cited Nir Kossovsky, my colleague from IAFS, as saying that the S&P 500 has a larger intangible premium than the average of all western stock markets due to a market perception of better value from that market.

Here’s my comment: Read more

Today at noon EDT: Driving Intangible Risk Management into the C-Suite

The black goo may be coming ashore in the Gulf Coast, but many would argue that the muck originated in a remote boardroom. In the wake of major headline risk events at BP, Massey, and the venerated Johnson & Johnson, the IAFS’s Mission Intangible Monthly Briefing tackles the trifecta of risk, governance and compliance with our program, Driving intangible risk management into the C-suite.

Leading this conversation on Friday 4 June at 12h00 EDT are Matthew Hogg, Vice President at Liberty International Underwriters, who chairs the Society’s Risk Committee and Cathy L. Reese, a Principal with Fish & Richardson, who chairs the Society’s IA Corporate Governance Committee. Mr. Hogg is a pioneer in intangible asset risk transfer; Ms. Reese is a leading advocate for board-level oversight of intangible asset management.

Registration for this and each Mission Intangible Monthly Briefing is complimentary. Slides and an exemplary downloadable program are posted on the website EVENTS page. Mary Adams, I-Capital Advisors, moderates.

If you are general counsel, chief financial officer, a risk officer, a manager of strategic partnerships, a reputation executive (marketing, PR), a board member of any public company, or have a financial interest in any publicly traded security, you (or a colleague Send to a Friend) won’t want to miss this event.

Learn more

IC for Public Relations and Investor Relations Professionals

Mary Adams, co-founder of Trek and I-Capital Advisors, will be appearing on a panel on June 10 at the Public Relations Society of America in Boston.

The program is entitled: New Era, New Valuation Shift: Communicating Intangible Assets.

We’re still emerging from an economic downturn, marketing budgets are flat at best, and yet we’re still charged with moving marketing and PR forward for our organizations.  At any moment, someone could flip the switch and we’ll be off and running on the next wave of productivity and profitability.  Will you be ready?

A turbulent economy aside, today’s communications professionals and corporate PR/IR staff face an interesting challenge: how do we communicate our company’s ‘intangible assets’ — intellectual capital, corporate culture — to the market, customers, media and investors?  Increasingly, even consumer-based companies will be expected to play a thought leadership role in our knowledge-based economy and if we aren’t doing it already, we should be.

Join us for a discussion on how to incorporate new values into your existing system of corporate communications and demonstrate real value of the assets inside your organizations.

Panelists will include:

• Mary Adams, Founder of
  I-Capital Advisors and co-author of Intangible Capital: Putting Knowledge to Work
  in the 21st Century Organization
• Todd Fromer, Managing
  Partner, Investor Relations, KCSA Strategic Communications, an
  integrated IR/ PR firm
• Nir Kossovsky, M.D., CEO of
  Steel City Re, a reputation risk solutions company, and the author of
  IAM magazine’s reputation case study series.

More information and registration

Exciting new book about the economics of intangibles: From Poverty to Prosperity

If you took economics in school, your mind is trapped inside a box. It’s not alone. Most minds in our business and economic communities today are still inside that box.

But it’s time to break out of the box because the knowledge economy is here to stay. And the knowledge economy breaks some of the fundamental rules of economics as we know them. That’s because the economics we learned is based on the concept of scarcity. I sell you a shirt and I have one less in inventory.

Knowledge, in contrast, is not a finite asset. If I share an idea with you, my inventory of ideas doesn’t go down. We will probably collaborate to improve the idea. If I sell you a software license, my software doesn’t decrease in value, it will probably increase in value because I’ll get user feedback. Read more

I will be speaking at the ICAP Ocean Tomo event on March 24-25

ICAP Ocean Tomo will be hosting an IP Think Tank before their latest auction.  I will be speaking and participating in a panel discussion about the Growing Intangible Asset Marketplace — Looking Beyond IP to Other Intangible Assets.  I’ll be sharing my thoughts on emerging intangible capital investment opportunities like processes, networks and teams. I will also provide the IP professionals in the audience  with a way of modeling the ecosystem that monetizes key intellectual property assets. The auction will be held at the Ritz Carlton in San Francisco.

Please let me know if you are planning to be there or if you have any suggestions on folks I should meet while I am in San Francisco. Here’s the Spring Think Tank site.

Accounting for Intangibles - The Income Statement is Not the Answer

I guess it’s time to talk about Accounting for Intangible Assets: There is Also an Income Statement by Stephen Penman. When this new paper first came out from the Center for Excellence in Accounting & Security Analysis at Columbia University, I decided to ignore it as an apology for current accounting standards–which are completely inadequate for the knowledge era.

But now the paper is getting more attention so I feel the need to answer it.

We are not talking about some theoretical accounting issue.  70% of the value of the average M&A deal is intangible. 60% of the average corporate investment is intangible. 50-80% of the average public company is intangible. That means that intangibles are ignored by accountants (the only real exception is in the case of a merger, when the lack of understanding ends up as 50% of the purchase price going to goodwill). None of this is helpful to the cause (and stated mission of Columbia’s center) of “excellence in accounting and security analysis.” Read more

Five Reasons to Focus on Optimizing Intangibles in 2010

I am more and more convinced that 2010 will be the year of intangibles, intangible assets, intangible capital, intellectual capital, knowledge assets or whatever else you want to call them. There are five big reasons why:

1. Intangibles already get the majority of your  investment dollars. Estimates are that at least 60% of the money organizations invest in their future productive capacity is in intangibles. If you are already spending money, isn’t time you created a way to track intangibles performance? Read more
   
   Filed Under: IC Factory, Stories
   Tagged: 2010, Innovation, Intangible Assets, Intangible Capital, Intangibles, Intellectual Capital, investment, performance, Reputation, valuation

   Don’t miss this program: Intangibles in the Coming Decade

   December 16, 2009 by Mary Adams · Leave a Comment 

   I’m really excited about the program that we are developing at the Intangible Asset Finance Society for Friday, January 8 at noon EST.

   Each of the leaders of the Society’s core committees is going to introduce what they view to be the top three critical issues for intangible asset management  in the coming decade. Then we are going to have a discussion of the various themes put forward. This is a do-not-miss event. The call is free that day but you will have to pay to get the recording after the fact. More info and registration.

   Filed Under: What's New
   Tagged: 2010, critical issues, IAFS, Intangible Asset Finance Society, Intangible Assets, Intangible Capital, Intangibles

   Intangibles Measurement

   August 7, 2009 by Mary Adams · 4 Comments 

   I just took a quick break from my vacation week to participate in the IAFS monthly conversation about intangibles. Here’s the presentation I made on Intangible Asset Performance and Financial Results.

   Intangible Asset Performance and Financial Results

   View more documents from Mary Adams.

   It builds on the recent video we posted that shows how to model the intangible factory. Read more

   Filed Under: IC Measurement
   Tagged: financials, I-Capex, IAFS, Intangible Assets, Intangibles, Intangibles Measurement Series, Intellectual Capital, KPI, performance

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