Lessons Learned Creating an IC Community on Ning
March 17, 2010 by Mary Adams · Leave a Comment
If you follow this blog, you may have noticed a hiatus of ten days or so on my meatier posts (I keep the micro posts going through Twitter). Here’s what has been happening…
The IC Knowledge Center, a community I started at the beginning of the year is taking off! Coming at the same time that we are doing the final reviews for our book and keeping up with client work, it has been a bit of a distraction–but a wonderful one.
We just went over 125 members, all very impressive folks from all around the world. We are also getting a good start at critical mass of different perspectives. Read more
I will be speaking at the ICAP Ocean Tomo event on March 24-25
March 8, 2010 by Mary Adams · Leave a Comment
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.
IT Management is Really IC Management
January 5, 2010 by Mary Adams · Leave a Comment
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
Getting the Most Our of Your Workforce - Manage It As Part of Your Intellectual/Intangible Capital
January 3, 2010 by Mary Adams · Leave a Comment
Gary Hamel has a new article on human capital called Management’s Dirty Little Secret. He talks about the very large lack of engagement of most employees (in a global survey by Towers Perrin, only one-fifth of employees are “truly engaged”).
Hamel explores all the reasons that this may be true including ignorance, indifference and impotence.
But his discussion is totally focused around the human capital itself. He doesn’t make a good case for how human capital fits into the value creation process of today’s knowledge-based economy. Read more
The Role of the Expert in Intangible Capital - Can We Open Source ICManagement Practices?
December 30, 2009 by Mary Adams · 2 Comments
Before the holidays, I was at an international gathering of experts in IC and innovation. Over dinner one evening, I listened in on a conversation among several of my dinner partners about the role of the expert in helping companies leverage their intangible capital (aka intellectual capital).
They were firmly in agreement. Corporate managers could not enter into a project related to IC alone. They needed an expert.
To be honest, I didn’t chime in. I wasn’t really sure what to say. We moved on to another topic but in quiet moments (there haven’t been that many this month which is why I am just now getting back to this) the question would haunt me.
On the one hand, I guess they were right. This is certainly how I earn my living, as an expert in helping companies leverage their unique intangible capital for performance and value.
But, on the other hand, there is something wrong with this perspective. Companies should not need an expert. They should be educated and empowered to do a lot of their IC work themselves. The role of the expert should not be to lead the project and hold onto the “best practices.” The experts need to find ways to build IC capabilities inside every business. ICManagement is too important to outsource. Read more
Five Reasons to Focus on Optimizing Intangibles in 2010
December 16, 2009 by Mary Adams · 6 Comments
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:
- 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
The New I in IC: Why we stopped using the phrase “intellectual capital”
December 3, 2009 by Mary Adams · 4 Comments
When I first became interested in the field of “intellectual capital,” I set up a Google Alert on the phrase and use this alert, among others, to find new content for this blog and for the IC Knowledge Center which I began close to four years ago. The alerts capture both website and blog use of the phrase. I now also monitor its use on Twitter.One of the appeals to me of the phrase and the field was that there was a clear definition of what can be a vague concept: the knowledge capital of companies. The broadly accepted definition (among those that follow the field) includes three main categories of assets: Read more
Accounting for Intangibles Represents Strategic Opportunity for Corporate America
October 6, 2009 by Mary Adams · Leave a Comment
Thanks to Nir Kossovsky for his post on the Mission: Intangible Blog pointing out the opinion piece by long-time corporate governance leader, Nell Minow, in the Financial Times last week entitled, Impresarios on the Board Are a Bad Sign. Minow makes the case thatOpponents of post-meltdown reforms to corporate governance are trying to hold back change by focusing on Washington. The US Chamber of Commerce is spending $100m (€69m, £63m) to try to defeat any substantive reforms. They are missing the point. No matter what happens in Washington, the market is forcing through significant and pervasive reforms. The companies that first understand that will benefit from a lower cost of capital and more committed long-term investors. As we understand better the mistakes of the past and the challenges ahead, fund managers and analysts will look at “new fundamentals”, four elements that will become as important as cash flow and return on investment. Read more
IC: Define It, Understand It, Capture It
September 17, 2009 by Mary Adams · Leave a Comment
Here’s my presentation to the Association for Consulting Expertise in Maine:
If you were there, let me know your thoughts and/or questions. If you weren’t there, please chime in too!
McKinsey’s New Innovation Metric
September 9, 2009 by Mary Adams · 2 Comments
I have faulted McKinsey before for suggesting simplistic metrics that can provide interesting historical data but be very dangerous as guides to management. So I read their latest suggestion on tracking innovation performance score with some skepticism.They don’t really explain how they calculate it but the sense of it is that they look at how much a company outperforms its competition over a five to seven year period and assume that this compound annual growth rate is a measure of a firm’s innovation performance. Here are a few thoughts. Read more
