Remember, if an asset, intangible or otherwise, adds value to your company and is the source of revenue and future wealth creation, measures must be taken to sustain (protect, preserve) its control, use, ownership, and monitor its value!
Effectively leveraging the value of a companies’ ‘relationship capital’ is dependant upon decision makers’ interest to sustain control, use, ownership, and monitor the value of those assets and their ‘relationship’ to company products and services.
A new way of thinking must be on the dashboard of every business decision maker and strategist. An ‘intangible asset officer’ may not be necessary in every company, but they can provide time and strategic analysis and assessment of the intangibles a company has and will produce.
Why should university researchers, research administrators, and technology transfer directors care there’s effective stewardship, oversight, and management of sponsored research projects?
In the final analyis, the success, effectiveness, and profitability of corporate-university research collaborations may have less to do with traditions, customs, past practices, and cultures and more to do with ensuring efficiencies and responsiveness in the overall administration (stewardship, oversight, management) of the collaborative experience.
For U.S. businesses, understanding and taking affirmative steps to maximize and extract as much value as possible from the intangible assets a company has developed, is not rocket science, it’s just good business!