The New Organizational Wealth

"Employee competence involves the capacity to act in a wide variety of situations to create both tangible and intangible assets."

"Knowledge organizations are not islands."

"Because the word knowledge is a notion with so many connotations, it is often not practical to use it."

"Competence is transferred most effectively when the recipient participates in the process."

"Leaders who are not initiates of the profession are at the mercy of the key people and powerless to get them to do anything they do not agree with."

"By strategic recruitment, management can both modify the company's business idea and increase or reduce its competence and other intangible assets."

"When a firm's leaders are unable to understand or control its dynamics, the organization becomes in effect leaderless, and it will automatically align itself with the forces acting on it and within it."

"Many managers tend to believe that a word written is a word understood. They forget that the receiver of information, not the giver, gives it meaning."

"The beauty of outsourcing is that it can transform what was previously a peripheral, low-status service function within a large company into an independent mission-driven business that is based on core competencies."

"After fifteen years in the information business, my conclusion is that it is getting harder and harder to charge for information."

"Customers are especially important to knowledge organizations."

"The dilemma of choice between a knowledge-focused and an information-focused strategy is likely to be one that challenges most knowledge organizations in the future."

"There exists no comprehensive system for measuring intangible assets that uses money as the common denominator and at the same time is practical and useful for managers."

"If the competence of professionals who have joined the company is divided by the competence of those who have left it, the quotient shows how personnel turnover affects the company's competence."

"A key indicator of efficiency is the proportion of professionals in the firm, that is, the number of professionals divided by the total number of employees."

"Many companies, especially big ones, run regular polls to detect changes in employee attitudes. The results of such polls indicate how the internal structure is developing."

"What proportion of sales comes from companies that have been customers for longer than five years?"

"The debate about how to account for intangible assets has been gathering momentum all over the world in recent years."