Introduction

Wealth and growth in today’s economy are driven primarily by intangible assets. In the modern “knowledge economy” over 80% of a company’s value lies in their intangibles. The effective management of a company’s intellectual assets will distance market threats and generate additional value and income for the business. The ability to exploit these assets is an increasing source of competitive advantage and company value, and will drive productivity gain.

Recent research found that although many SME’s in Scotland had basic awareness of the importance of intangible factors and assets to their business, very few businesses had a good understanding of them, were able to place a value on these assets or reported any activity to record, safeguard or exploit them. The main reasons given for not doing this were cost, lack of knowledge and failure to see the business benefits.

About the IA Change-driving tools

This suite of IA tools has been designed specifically to help SME’s identify and extract value from hitherto untouched, and possibly unknown, intellectual assets within the company.

There are five tools in the suite that will help you drive change through IA management in your business. The tools are designed to be independent but are inter-linked to enable companies to embark on a complete IA journey. Facilitation of the tools stimulates discussion and debate of IA issues within your company and helps to extract more value from them.

To use the tools, follow the Online IA Tools link.