Corporate Longitude

The rise of knowledge economics has highlighted a mismatch between current financial reporting systems and intellectual assets. Modern corporations habitually calibrate along a single measure: a financial one. This is corporate latitude. The trouble is that it gives only part of the picture. The other key co-ordinate — the corporate longitude — is missing. A practicable method for measuring longitude — or to put it another way, intellectual capital — is urgently needed.

Where do we register the resignation of a key person? If a top software developer leaves even a company as big as Microsoft it is significant. Where do we register the loss of a key customer or the failure of a key project? The measures by which we all manage only give us half an understanding of where we are or where we re going.

Intellectual capital is a combination of human capital — the brains, skills, insights and potential of those in an organization — and structural capital — wrapped up in customers, processes, databases, brands and systems.

Corporate Longitude provides a way to navigate through the turbulent waters of business and satisfy the need, for new mechanisms, models, measures, and metaphors which will allow us to capitalize on the new reality.

• The Journey
  
• Acknowledgements
• About the author
• Departure

1. My Journey
   
• The smell of tar
• Beyond skepticism
2. The New Knowledge Economics
• So, farewell Adam Smith
• Whose ideas are they anyway?
• The battle for thought leadership
• Model ideas
• Forget products; think ideas
• The intangible hand
• Markets in knowledge
3. Changing the Nature of Value
• What is valuable?
• Perks for the people
• The talent market
• Putting a price on trust
• The personal network effect
• The company is the network
4. Renaissance Perspectives
• Renaissance accounting
• The intangible gap
• New perspectives
• Navigating the future
5. 1+1=11
• Where might be going
• Where we are
• New shapes and metaphors
• Creating intelligent enterprising
  
6. Workplaces Fit for Knowledge Workers
• TKnowledge work spaces
• Places with sense
• Places with meaning
7. U-capital & I-commerce
• Directions differ
• Brain stress
• Building identity assets
  
8. The Knowledge Innovation Dimension
• Innovation perspectives
• Innovation space
• Innovating culture
• Welcome aboard
9. Leading with a Compass
• Leading the new generation
• Refining navigational leadership
• Shaping leadership perspectives
• A knowledge leader tells a story
10. The Intellectual Wealth of Nations
• The new wealth of nations
• Taking stock of the world
• Arrival

Tries again to define how to measure knowledge and its impact.

A very interesting read, but he fails to come to any real conclusion. He just opens more questions.

Read it anyway, it is thought-provoking, which always is a treat.