Summary

It's easy to add up the obvious assets of a business: simply tally the value of the physical attributes like computers, real estate, inventory, vehicles, etc. But there is much more to a business, including patents, copyrights, trademarks and, above all, worker creativity and talent. Leif Edvinsson is the world's leading authority on intellectual capital-- those elusive assets that represent the skills and ideas of the people behind the products. As Director of Intellectual Capital at Skandia, one of Europe's most respected and forward-thinking financial firms, he has developed a method for quantifying, expanding, developing and managing these resources. Using case studies of Microsoft, IBM, Netscape, Cisco and Pixar, Leif Edvinsson and Michael S. Malone, a high-tech journalist and coauthor of the bestselling "The Virtual Corporation", explain how the most successful companies have discovered the benefits of utilizing, and the dangers of ignoring, intellectual capital.