Leveraging and Protecting Core Intangible Assets
Assets come in many shapes, sizes and colours, and those that you cannot see or touch
and these are called intangible.
Intangible assets are most often thought of as copyright, trademarks, logos, inventions,
partnerships and relationships etc and are generally referred to as “legal assets” or
“intellectual property”. This paper talks about one such asset, knowledge.
Most organisations spend a great deal of effort and time in protecting their tangible assets:
making sure they are recorded for inventory, valuation and taxation purposes, perhaps
marked for easy identification, assigned the responsibility of individuals to ensure their
safe-keeping. By and large, tangible assets are easier to protect than intangibles.
Leveraging intangible assets can also be easier than intangibles. After all, if you own a
shovel all you need to do is use it to leverage it. Whether it is then optimally leveraged
would be another matter. The same can be true for intangible assets – use them to
leverage them but optimal states are much more difficult to define.
In our experience the most valuable yet least protected of an organisation’s assets is its
knowledge. To understand our view you may consider that quite apart from the knowledge
of how our business works, its processes, its raison d’être what sustains a business in its
industry are core competencies. For example, an energy distribution business would
require substantial competence in asset management, works management, financial
management, network management, program management, customer service and
business intelligence/knowledge management. We have not thus far experienced any
organisation that takes specific measures to protect and nurture its core competencies
other than hierarchically.
Instead, many organisations spend huge resources in attempts to move their knowledge
from tacit to explicit through Information Management programs, document and records
management solutions and though activities designed to “document what we know”. We
have seen little or no evidence of organisations that truly manage, culture and leverage
their knowledge as well as their core competencies.
For example, most organisations are structured hierarchically. That structure has probably
developed over time, being adjusted as management sees the need to more effectively
deliver its goods and services. Often such hierarchies will fail to cluster or identify core
competency subject matter experts, especially such as customer service since that skill
and knowledge is usually spread across the organisation. Thus, the structure will fail to
leverage the combined knowledge that keeps an organisation in business.
The specific experiences of front-line customer service counter or accounts personnel are
rarely shared with the executive responsible for customer service. There are generally very
limited mechanisms by which the knowledge, experiences and ideas of individuals are
leveraged to grow the knowledge of others, or to take advantage of that “brilliant” idea that
is occasionally generated among the workforce. To do that we need to find a low-cost
effective means of cross-pollination and knowledge-sharing within our organisation.
Coincidentally, Pandis has found that the same mechanism that can be used to leverage
core competencies and organisational knowledge can also provide a basis on which all
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stores of technical knowledge can be shared across competency domains, enriching the
business understanding of all subject matter experts and creating versatile individuals that
can “sit astride” multiple core competency domains. Such individuals then become the
champions for change, conveniently located at the lower levels of the hierarchy but able to
influence the executive and contribute to strategic thought leadership.
If you would like further information on how to protect, nurture and leverage your business’
core competencies just contact Ken Garrard from Pandis on 0407 703 676.
©Copyright 2011, professional and interim services pty ltd
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