A story that gets it -- from The Tennessean (Nashville): "Intellectual capital an undervalued asset":
In case you haven’t noticed, thousands of organizations are in some form of generational transition. All you have to do is look around your company, and you’ll see men and women actively contemplating or planning their exits.Millions of Americans are reaching retirement age with sufficient resources to retire comfortably, or perhaps, start another business adventure.Yes, Gen X’ers and millennials, this transition will open the door to you for upward mobility, but you should also be concerned. The individuals retreating from your organization are taking years of experience and knowledge with them — assets that are highly valuable to your company’s future success.In any business, we are what our people know, and not just what they know but also how they know it.This is a company’s intellectual capital.Intellectual capital is what gives a business its competitive advantage. But all too often, companies overlook it or misunderstand it when, instead, they should be striving to strategically capture it.. . .A crucial need in any business is to sit down with whomever has been important in the building of the business and listen to that person’s stories, both the good and the bad. Ask how they learned things, write down the stories and turn them into valuable policies, processes and decisions.You’d be surprised at the value of such an exercise. I estimate that capturing these “stories” is worth at least 10 percentage points of profit.
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