I have received letters, phone calls, and e-mail from every continent except Antarctica. Both the World Economic Forum, whose principal constituents are big companies from advanced economies, and the World Bank, whose principal clients are the least-developed nations, have taken up intellectual capital as major themes of their work. In advertisements in The Economist, Slovakia touts its intellectual capital as a reason for businesses to invest there. But it's quite a wind. If companies handle it well and aren't blown off course, they will, I am more convinced than ever, find themselves propelled to new lands, rich with unexpected opportunities.
Intellectual assets continue to displace physical and financial capital as factors of production.
Overall, McKinsey consultant Lowell Bryan has estimated, U.S. companies today require 20 percent less in the way of tangible assets to produce a dollar's worth of sales than they did a genedefining role ration ago. The same is true for working capital as the substitution of information for inventory continues unabated. I can think of, and in most cases it is now knowledge that gives one company an advantage over another, rather than, say, physical scale or scope. No wonder competition for intellectual capital has heated up. Competition has become keener for all three.