Michael D. Moberly November 30, 2009
As conveyed numerous times at this blog, for a vast majority of company’s today, the value of their intangible assets far exceeds the value of their tangible assets. There’s absolutely no evidence on-the-horizon that this economic fact – business reality will reverse itself as knowledge/know how (based) economies and companies continue to build steam and literally become the global norm.
This economic fact – business reality also establishes (more clearly) the need for company management teams to develop in-house best practices to achieve (at minimum) three objectives:
a. recognize how – when intangible assets are created, used, underused, or not used.
b. identify, unravel, and assess those assets and put (align, bundle) them into contexts where they can be utilized, i.e., exploited (positioned-used-leveraged) to maximize and extract as much value as possible and create (additional) competitive advantages.
c. monitor the assets relative to their status, i.e., stability, durability, fragility, and materiality.
A well managed – monitored company portfolio of intangible assets can produce – deliver the following benefits to companies:
1. identify under-utilized intangible assets
2. improve coordination between business units insofar as identifying – bundling – aligning intangible asset commonalities to produce – deliver ‘new’ sources value
3. serve as foundations for company management teams to strengthen their strategic leadership relative to increasingly competitive and global markets
4. strengthen the alignment of R&D, intellectual property, and intangible asset production, utilization, and/or acquisition with company business strategies
5. lengthen (strengthen) the value and competitive advantage life cycles’ of intangible assets.
(This post was adapted by Mr. Moberly from a 2009 article by Michael J. Yachnik (PWC) titled ‘Identifying and managing intangibles: what’s in your closet’?)
