Corporate Longitude

Navigating the Knowledge Economy

Leif Edvinsson

Publisher: Bookhouse, 2002 , 230 pages

ISBN: 91-89388-09-7

Synopsis:

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The rise of knowledge economics has highlighted a mismatch between current financial reporting systems and intellectual assets. Modern corporations habitually calibrate along a single measure: a financial one. This is corporate latitude. The trouble is that it gives only part of the picture. The other key co-ordinate – the  corporate longitude – is missing. A practicable method for measuring longitude – or to put it another way, intellectual capital – is urgently needed.

Where do we register the resignation of a key person? If a top software developer leaves even a company as big as Microsoft it is significant. Where do we register the loss of a key customer or the failure of a key project? The measures by which we all manage only give us half an understanding of where we are or where we  re going.

Intellectual capital is a combination of human capital – the brains, skills, insights and potential of those in an organization – and structural capital – wrapped up in customers, processes, databases, brands and systems.

Corporate Longitude provides a way to navigate through the turbulent waters of business and satisfy the need, for new mechanisms, models, measures, and metaphors which will allow us to capitalize on the new reality.

 

Table of Contents:

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• The Journey
  
• Acknowledgements
• About the author
• Departure

1. My Journey
   
• The smell of tar
• Beyond skepticism
2. The New Knowledge Economics
• So, farewell Adam Smith
• Whose ideas are they anyway?
• The battle for thought leadership
• Model ideas
• Forget products; think ideas
• The intangible hand
• Markets in knowledge
3. Changing the Nature of Value
• What is valuable?
• Perks for the people
• The talent market
• Putting a price on trust
• The personal network effect
• The company is the network
4. Renaissance Perspectives
• Renaissance accounting
• The intangible gap
• New perspectives
• Navigating the future
5. 1+1=11
• Where might be going
• Where we are
• New shapes and metaphors
• Creating intelligent enterprising
  
6. Workplaces Fit for Knowledge Workers
• TKnowledge work spaces
• Places with sense
• Places with meaning
7. U-capital & I-commerce
• Directions differ
• Brain stress
• Building identity assets
  
8. The Knowledge Innovation Dimension
• Innovation perspectives
• Innovation space
• Innovating culture
• Welcome aboard
9. Leading with a Compass
• Leading the new generation
• Refining navigational leadership
• Shaping leadership perspectives
• A knowledge leader tells a story
10. The Intellectual Wealth of Nations
• The new wealth of nations
• Taking stock of the world
• Arrival