Franchisors should adopt a slight, but increasingly necessary shift in their business perspective from being primarily or solely market and margin driven to being more protective of their intangible assets.
In a significant percentage of business transactions intangible assets and IP will be in play, but vulnerable to misappropriation and/or infringement.
Frequently business differentiators are merely the most visible and only scratch the surface of a company’s embedded competitive advantages, or more correctly, its intangible assets.
Developing a ’risk intelligent company culture’ begins by recognizing that risk is not solely an external phenomena
and recognizing that company value can be favorably affected by integrating certain aspects of risk management with human resource management.
Company management teams and boards will experience a strong ROI for developing an intangible asset focused company culture because rising percentages of company value, sources of revenue, and ‘building blocks’ for growth lie in – are directly linked to intangible assets!
It’s not sufficient for management teams to merely know what intangible assets are or which one’s their company produces and possesses or follow the conventional accounting path of lumping them altogether (indistinguishable) as goodwill.