From:  Goran Roos <goran.roos@I...>
Date:  Thu Aug 7, 2003  10:21 am
Subject:  RE: [icap_club] are companies too busy to see the opportunities o f IC?

 
Chris,
 
I can understand that you have no wish to justify yourself to the financial & accounting community but you will never be taken seriously from either an academic perspective or a regulative perspective and therefore never get any impact no matter how good the underlying ideas are if you do not achieve this. The unfortunate fact of the field is that it;
 
1. Lacks standardisation of language
2. Clear an unambiguous non-overlapping definitions
3. Have agreement of basic models or theory
4. Is full of erroneous claims
5. Suffers from poor or no methodologies in most published studies
6. Have no longitudinal studies
7. Have few statistical studies
8. Does not full fill the requirement for measurement systems [according to measurement theory] and can therefore not be assured [audited] and can there fore not be required by regulators
9. Have very few generalisable or grounded claims as relates to benefits commensurate with the costs from a managerial point of view compared to other offerings
 
I could go on much longer but I think my point is coming through.
 
In order for this field to move forward we must all have a lot of normal research humbleness and dig in to proving our claims.  Given the increased participation in this field this should be quite possible but we must not let enthusiasm substitute for scientific proof and scientific method.
 
Kind Regards
Göran
 
-----Original Message-----
From: chris macrae [mailto:wcbn007@easynet.co.uk]
Sent: Friday, August 01, 2003 4:01 PM
To: icap_club@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [icap_club] are companies too busy to see the opportunities of IC?

Goran, these are interesting answers but they travel down an assumption path that isn't what some of us mean by IC

Specifically in our view, IC or intangibles needs to be build as a system which produces a constructive tension with all that is not transparent through financial measures alone. To do this, we certainly have no wish to be required to justify ourselves by financial measures. We can very simply demonstrate that with proper IC governance in place a company like Andersen wouldn't have lost all (its reputation).

Since Brookings issued its intangibles crisis reports in 2000 (co-edited by the former chairman of the sec) the point is that there is a missing governance system systemically impacting about 80% of whether value goes up or down that classical accounting assumptions of separability and linearity are the worst possible maths to monitor.

One would have thought that some leaders would want to access systemic IC mapping because the field's wide open to seize organisation advantage with it

Chris Macrae, wcbn007@easynet.co.uk UK mobile 0793 144 2446

More at our EU debating space  http://www.knowledgeboard.com/community/zones/sig/kmei.html

-----Original Message-----
From: Goran Roos [mailto:goran.roos@INTCAP.com]
Sent: 01 August 2003 14:42
To: icap_club@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [icap_club] are companies too busy to see the opportunities of IC?

A short answer to your questions:

1. Most companies feel that they do this already [and they are basically correct since good companies have always done this] and are not aware of the value added that a formalised approach might give. This is partly the field's own fault since we have very few studies that prove statistically or longitudinally the benefits of the approaches and also the language is confusing in the field and furthermore some of the approaches and writing is outright wrong [e.g. MV=BV+IC] which does not add credence.

2. In order to reach CEO's and the like the field must gain acceptance with auditors and regulators in a way that cannot be easily rejected [e.g. many models and claims can be rejected today for many different reasons]

3. IC have featured as change leadership [see the APION case]

4. The disclosure thing is a major issue from a legal and assurance/auditing point of view and it is far from easy and will require endorsements from the SEC

Kind Regards

Göran Roos

-----Original Message-----
From: chris macrae [mailto:wcbn007@easynet.co.uk]
Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2003 6:23 PM
To: icap_club@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [icap_club] are companies too busy to see the opportunities of IC?

I wanted to ask this question because I was looking at the delegate list of the formidable EU-sponsored Prism conference summarising 3 years of progress on intangibles research

Of about 300 delegates, only 10 appeared recognisably to be of large corporations. ( I know I missed a few!) Most seemed to be consultants or professional advisers.

Firstly, is it true that the vast majority of corporations haven't yet become aware that the most innovative (value growing) thing they could do is understand and systemise the dynamics of Intellectual Capital?

Secondly, if this is true, are there precedences: which channels really get news over to top corporate leaders? Eg Do CBI conferences or what? And has IC ever featured as a serious change leadership agenda connected to detailed new training agenda rather than the sort of hot chatter content that goes on in the corporate annual report when a CEO says our company's greatest asset is its people?

Chris Macrae, wcbn007@easynet.co.uk, www.valuetrue.com