Intellectual Capital and Reintro -- Hank Jonas LO7979

John Woods (jwoods@execpc.com)
Thu, 20 Jun 1996 05:34:36 -0500

Replying to LO7961 --

Harry Jonas asks about intellectual capital:
>I'm happy to send any readers copies of our proposal, but my real questions
>are:
> - Is intellectual capital still a lively topic, or just a passing fad
>(shades of "Is LO a passing fad?")? If the latter, what have we learned (if
>anything) by dabbling in this area?
> - If companies are still talking about it, have they developed any creative,
>data-based retention strategies for their "value creators"? Have these
>strategies generalized to larger populations?
> - Are the value incongruities mentioned above issues in the further
>development of the intellectual capital concept? What have we missed?

Without responding directly to these questions, it may be that the words
intellectual capital are too abstract and those you are talking to are not
making the connection between this phrase and the performance their
organizations. What I have been reading about recently is the importance of
appreciating that the skills of people in any organization are its most
important assets. In the book Agile Competitors and Virtual Organizations
by Goldman, Nagel, and Preiss (Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1995), the authors
note these three insights into what is important in organizations and what
management must focus on:

1. Goods and services are not longer distinct product categories. Agile
competitors always offer the most valuable mix physical products,
information, and services to the customers (and hence the most profitable to
the vendor).s

2. What companies really have to offer to their customers is the
applicaiton of knowledge, skills, and information to the needs and problems
of individual customers.

3. An agile company's most important asset, and its true production
resource, is the set of core competencies it possesses, first in the form of
personnel, and second in the form of technologies.

Perhaps if you couched your approach in terms such as above, it might work
better.

John Woods
jwoods@execpc.com

-- 

John Woods <jwoods@execpc.com>

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>