100 GREAT BUSINESS IDEAS • 225Developing intellectual capital is imperative, as knowledge
is an asset and a source of power. As Lew Platt, former CEO of
Hewlett-Packard, says: “If HP knew what it knows, we would be
three times as profi table.”
The idea
Knowledge is the intellectual capital that an organization possesses.
Technological developments and the internet have promoted an
explosion in the scope and depth of available knowledge. As there
is so much information and knowledge available, it is important
for organizations to know how to creatively develop and use
information.
Intellectual capital is an asset that is created from knowledge.
As writer Thomas Stewart argues, “Intelligence becomes an
asset when some useful order is created out of free-fl owing
brainpower... organizational intellect becomes intellectual capital
only when it can be deployed to do something that could not be done
if it remained scattered round like so many coins in the gutter.”
Knowledge and information have to be collected, protected, and
effectively managed if they are to be valuable resources. Appointed
in 1991 as the world’s fi rst director of intellectual capital at Skandia
(Sweden’s largest fi nancial services corporation), Leif Edvinsson
divided intellectual capital into three types:
(^99) DEVELOPING