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 Good introduction into business and wealth
Very good introduction to business. Great reading on the information age. Good insight into Knowledge Management and Intellectual Capital All entrepreneur's, business people, managers, and employees will benefit from this book. I highly recommend.
 Ref A for Buidling Value in the Information Age
I read the same author's The Wealth of Knowledge: Intellectual Capital and the Twenty-first Century Organization first, and then went back to get this earlier book (1998), and I actually feel that reading them in that order is better. This book has a lot of detail that is well served by the context that can be found in the later book.
For those who really wish to get a deep look at the future of building value in the age of distribution information in all languages, I recommend that both of Stewart's books be read in conjunction with the following three Nobel-level books: Margaret Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World Robert Buckman, Building a Knowledge-Driven Organization and Christensen & Raynor, The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business (Collins Business Essentials) My reviews of these books are both evaluative and summative, and could be helpful as short-cut, but they are no substitute for actually buying and reading the books.
The most important point in this book is that the value is no longer found in collecting just in case knowledge, but rather in connecting dots to dots, dots to people, and (the highest value) people to people. It's about connecting, not collecting. Based on this book I drew my own value triangle, VALUE appearing in the middle of the triangle, with Context being the lower left corer, Content being the lower right corner, and CONNECTION being the apex of the triangle--further refined as connecting customers, connecting contributing talents, and connecting sub-contracted sources, softwares, and services. No one is doing this today in the manner that meets the emerging needs of the marketplace.
Most interesting to me is the author's early emphasis on the Chief Financial Officer being the point of sale, not the CEO, the CTO, or the production divisions. Intellectual capital is a value-creation and profit-building exercise, and it needs to be presented as a financial campaign plan, not a technology plan, not a human resources plan, and not a sales and marketing plan.
Although the author focuses on intellectual property, and provides compelling anecdotes and links that suggest that any company in the knowledge business can increase its bottom line earnings by 20-40% if it does a better job of managing its intellectual property, I see two other emerging marketplaces in this book that the author may not have intended but certainly contributes insights to: managing shared access to external sources, to reduce the cost and increase the knowledge that companies can use to increase their competence in a global environment; and managing customer understanding and relationships in the aggregate--it is possible to take cross-selling to new heights if companies in different industries that are not competing with one another, will share customer information in new ways, thus leading to the invention of new3 offerings and new value.
A major point in this book that I believe everyone misses is that the management of intellectual property, or knowledge management, or external open source information acquisition and exploitation, is totally and utterly without value in the absence of a strategy. Collection or connecting is of the greatest value when it is done with strategic purpose, operational efficiency, and tactical effect.
There is a lot more in this book that will impact on my strategic business planning, and that I choose to not summarize here, but will instead end with three points the author makes that I consider to be important:
1) In the information age, only investments in knowledge building are really investments--traditional investments in capital goods are costs, not to be confused with investments intended to generate new value.
2) Knowledge value grows on a logarithmic scale, while goods value grows arithmetically.
3) In today's environment, careers are defined by personal skills and networking, not traditional jobs and corporate positions. The corollary of this is that individuals must self-manage their continuing education and skill acquisition, and any job that fails to provide for continuing upgrading of skills is not worth keeping.
I consider this a seminal reference.
See also, with reviews:
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
Revolutionary Wealth: How it will be created and how it will change our lives
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism: How the Financial System Underminded Social Ideals, Damaged Trust in the Markets, Robbed Investors of Trillions - and What to Do About It
The Politics of Fortune: A New Agenda For Business Leaders
Jumping Off Point Into Intellectual Capital
As an occassional reader of business literature and a new convert to the importance of knowledge management, I found Stewart's book a wonderful introduction to this important organizational management strategy.I immediately found myself thinking of ways to apply the various forms of intellectual capital (human, structural and customer) to my work in higher education. In fact, Stewart's work provided important insights that proved helpful to my doctoral dissertation on higher education/business partnerships. Admittedly, there is little here in terms of practical strategies for applying the ideas in the marketplace. However, it does encourage those who are interested in the topic to pursue more in depth and practical works on the subject of knowledge management.
 Stewart treats us all like children
I started reading this book with the best intentions. However, when Stewart begins with such kindergarten level assertations, I knew as a Business student, there was no point in continuing reading this book. Stewart, a Fortune Editor, has no business training: he is a Harvard English major, and this is clearly shown in his work. If one reads his fortune articles, they are equally poorly written with bad information. I would suggest that one spend their money on better Management authors such as Jon Katzenbach or Peter Drucker, both of whom actually have a clue.
Intellectual Capital : No Longer A Blurred Term
It is my great pleasure to write a review for this important book. Over past years a lot of book investigating "the value of human resource as a competitive advantage" in organizations was published but none of them explained us what human resource and value mean in the larger context of competition, what are practical ways to use of this very competitive resource on behalf of the organization. I herald that this book gives the absolute framework we need for a new and comprehensive study on intellectual capital.According to Stewart, Intellectual Capital is consisted of three interconnected parts, namely, Human Capital, Structural Capital and Customer Capital. Human Capital means the knowledge and skill level of corporate personnel. If an organization has a personnel inventory whose knowledge and skills are vital in the long-run, the first part of the capital forms a strong base to capitalize on. The other part of Intellectual capital, Customer Capital, means that organization is producing value for its customers and accordingly custemers have a strong loyalty to the company. The last part of Intellectual capital is Structural capital which connects Human Capital and Customer Capital to each other. Organizations need structural systems to use human resource in order to meet customers' needs and wants in a more effective way which other companies can not imitate without incurring high costs and time loss. You will find a lot of living examples intended to make these abstract concepts understandable to readers who are accomodated to hear many pop-ups regarding human capital and its value. Overall, I strongly recommend with five stars.
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(based on 29 reviews)
