Sep
3
Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of Organizations Captured – Thomas A. Stewart
Filed Under Free Book Summary - Online
Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of Organizations
Purpose:
What is happening in our world today?
What is Intellectual Capital?
How do you leverage Intellectual Capital for a company?
Central Messages:
Information rather than manufacturing and natural resources is becoming the most important source of wealth.
Much like the changes that took place when manufacturing supplanted agriculture, the technology revolution is dramatically changing our world. What will the world be like when manufacturing is only 2 percent of our economy and information is the rest?
Validations:
Applications:
Ten Principles for Managing Intellectual Capital (Paraphrased)
1. You can’t own, you can only share Intellectual Capital. People choose to share it when there is incentive and a company recognizes that it’s shared.
2. Companies can create capital that can be used when the capital doesn’t leave at 5pm with the brains. This means developing communities of practice and other social forms of learning can make the knowledge less dependent on any one individual. The company should provide the locus of learning so that it will be the chief beneficiary of the learning. It doesn’t matter if it makes it to other organizations.
3. Organizational wealth is created around the skills that are (1) proprietary because no one does them better and (2) strategic because they create value for the customers that pay. Invest in the people that need these skills and minimize or automate other skills.
4. Structural capital is intangible assets that companies own. Systems for communicating knowledge and information within the company. Be careful not to let structural capital get in the way of the value to the customer. The goal is to make it as easy as possible for your customers to work with your people.
5. Structural capital serves two purposes. First to stockpile useful knowledge that will add value to the customer. Two is to speed up the flow of that information inside of the company. Make sure to have at least Yellow Pages, Lessons Learned and Competitor Intelligence.
6. Can intangibles do the work of costly physical assets?
7. Knowledge work is custom work. Mass-produced solutions won’t yield high margin profits. Special relationships are the key.
8. Every company needs to analyze the value chain of the industry it participates in and see which information is the most crucial. The closer to the customer the better.
9. Focus on the flow of information, not on the flow of materials.
10. Human, structural and customer capital work together.