I think it’s important for readers to know the book that Chris referred to below, and he's probably too modest to mention it. It’s Mapping Intangible Assets, and I hope it gets a wider airing than business people. The synopsis is:

To survive and flourish, organizations must create win-win relationships with the people they deal with. This, in fact, is every [business’s] underlying purpose: to organize and connect different groups of people (customers, employees, investors, distributors, partners etc.) in a collaborative quest for a particular form of mutual value creation. Most thoughtful business leaders are well aware of this, yet rarely make profitable use of their knowledge for one simple reason: no one has yet managed to translate this rather abstract and generalistic insight into concerted, practical action. Until now. Value Multiplication Mapping does just that, providing professionals with the tools they need to discover the value of the people, knowledge, networks, culture, behaviours, brands, communities, and learning that form the basis of today's corporate value measurement.

   It was one concern Colin had, too: how does one value these intangibles?
   The idealist in me says that all companies need to be analysed according to their intangibles—God knows how often we have said a company is very dependent its informal networks.
   I’d even suggest some of the bigger business magazines publish an index of the top 25 firms each year to give the Mapping method more acceptance. posted by Jack Yan, 1:52 AM  permalink