Intellectual Capital: Making the Intangible Tangible (And Valuable)

As a business leader, do you know what your team is capable of? Do you have a group of critical-thinking individuals, all with specialized tasks that each help the department run in invaluable ways to the organization as a whole?

How about contracts with specific customers; what is detailed in those? How about the actual relationships with customers?

The likely answer to all of these inquiries is “yes,” but understanding the concepts that these answers fall under is more valuable than most realize. These concepts and several more pertain to intellectual capital, and one of the most important pieces of that is not necessarily raw materials or specific products, but your employees’ knowledge base.

Intellectual capital is a hidden gem of equity in an organization in more ways than one, but it is often overlooked completely. Today, I want to explore why, and what you might be missing out on by not leveraging intellectual capital to your benefit as a business leader and to benefit your organization.

Misplaced Value

All too often, I find myself meeting with a large corporation to discuss where they are headed, and when I ask them what their most valuable asset is, their instant response always pertains to products, services…