Competitive Advantage - part 3: How to Find Intellectual Capital?

July 13, 2009

Welcome Back. We've got lots of in depth business strategy to share with you today.

Like almost any strategic change, a commitment to intellectual capital demands an adjustment of focus.  And since knowledge (unlike information) is by definition personal, you must focus on people.  Stewart recommends a move from “paying people to investing in them” and looking for specific ways to invest. Don’t expect employees to be walking databases.  Instead, tap their experiential knowledge; even if it seems irrelevant, it could prove useful at an unexpected juncture.

Scheffman and Thompson of Vanderbilt University recommend an “intellectual property audit” wherein managers and front-line employees brainstorm a list of the company’s intellectual resources.  Some hidden ones include branding, which capitalizes on customer knowledge; patents; and the tacit, wide-range knowledge of all employees.

When identifying and cataloging intellectual capital, consider three categories: commodity skills (nonspecific knowledge that is equally valuable to all businesses), leveraged skills (industry- but not company-specific knowledge), and proprietary skills (company-specific knowledge; trade secrets).  

Tomorrow we will discuss what to do with Intellectual Capital to give you the Competitive Advantage.

Strategiclly Yours,

Bob

Posted by Bob Jonas | Filed Under Competitive Advantage, Strategy Management, Strategy in a Box, Trends Analysis 

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One Response to “Competitive Advantage - part 3: How to Find Intellectual Capital?”

  1. Competitive Advantage - part 2: Why Intellectual Capital? : BobJonas.com on September 10th, 2009 1:25 pm

    [...] Next week we’ll go into ‘How to Find Intellectual Property”. [...]

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