How do firms like Hewlett-Packard, DuPont, Dow Chemical, IBM, and Texas Instruments routinely convert the ideas of their employees into profits that sustain the corporation? How can buyers and sellers calculate the assets of the acquired firm in a merger or acquisition? How can an organization affect the firm's stock price using the leverage of intellectual assets? Identifying a firm's assets, especially its intellectual assets-the proprietary knowledge expressed as a recipe, formula, trade secret, invention, program, or process-has become critical to a company's overall vision and strategic plan and essential in such transactions as stock offerings or mergers. In the era of the knowledge-based company, where the firm's genius and future lies in its ideas, a firm's collective know-how has become a measurable commodity-and as much a part of its bottom line as the condition of its cash investments, plant, and equipment. Extracting and measuring the real value of knowledge is essential for any corporate head who knows how high the stakes have become for corporate survival in the information age-where the innovative idea is as good as, if not better than, gold! Value-Driven Intellectual Capital is a corporate and financial executives' handbook to the new world of intangible assets-what they are and how to convert them into cash or strategic position. Written by one of the seminal thinkers in the field, and the key organizer of the ICM Gathering, a group of leading-edge knowledge-based companies, Value-Driven Intellectual Capital explains the new, boundary-expanding world of intellectual assets-where translating an innovative idea into bottom-line profits involves a tightly focused strategy with clear directives for making it happen. A blueprint for turning corporate knowledge, know-how, and intellectual property into a sustainable competitive weapon that will build a firm's reputation and market share, this practical, insightful book outlines: * Basic concepts underlyin
Intellectual capital provides a significant competitive advantage for companies today. Intangible assets-product innovation, patents, copyrights, know-how, and corporate knowledge-have become as important as brick, mortar, and equipment.