Intangibles - Financial Value of Reputation

Mary Adams, who blogs at Smarter Companies, consistently serves up the best analyses of the economic value of intangible assets, especially intellectual property. This slide show for a presentation to the Intangible Asset Finance Society looks at her model of the intangible asset "factory".

Unfortunately, most lists of off-balance sheet assets don't include reputation capital.

Perhaps Ms Adams intends it to fit under the 'relationship capital' component of her intellectual capital = human capital + relationship capital + structural capital equation. But wouldn't it be lovely for those of us who help companies manage reputation if she could turn her mind to this understudied element of the intangible asset equation?

Intangible Asset Performance and Financial Results

View more documents from Mary Adams.

Comments

[Mary Adams]

Boyd- Thank you for the comments here. It's really interesting that you bring up reputation.

As you say, many would consider it part of relationship capital. Certainly, most people classify brands as relationship capital. This is appropriate and advisable as brands are IP as well as an intangible asset and deserve to be inventoried and managed.

But reputation is something more. In fact, my response was slowed this week because we were finishing up the manuscript of our new book, Intangible Capital. The last chapter of the book is called Reputation is the New Bottom Line. http://www.i-capitaladvisors.com/book

The reason we ended up giving reputation such important billing is that it is ultimately the way by which all intangibles management is judged. And in our interconnected world where knowledge is spread across an organization's network (both internal and external), it is reputation that holds everything together. Here's a summary of my thoughts on this http://www.i-capitaladvisors.com/2009/09/03/intangibles-measurement-v-reputation-is-the-new-bottom-line/

What do you think?

[Boyd Neil]

I am delighted that your book is going to address reputation as the new bottom line. In my expereince, there is still some corporate resistance to the notion that reputation has tangible impact. Maybe, as someone else said, we should stop calling it an intangible asset which may undervalue its impact. So, many of us are going to read your book in the hopes that it will provide ammunition to battle the troglodytes. (Certainly the book will find its place in the curricula of the university progtams I teach, in addition to my day job.) When I get back from my current short trip to the UK I will take a look at the links you've provided.