This is the most valuable capital of all it s where the money is but ironically, it s also the least well managed. Tom Stewart has a wonderful line, The customer today can call the tune because he knows the score. The goal is to maintain an increasingly intimate relationship. Empowered customers deal directly with companies databases. Ten Principles for Managing Intellectual Capital Companies don t own human and customer capital.
Companies share the ownership of human assets with employees.
They share ownership of customer capital with suppliers and customers. An adversarial relationship with employees destroys wealth. To create human capital it can use, a company needs to foster teamwork, communities of practice, and other social forms of learning. To manage and develop human capital, companies must unsentimentally recognize that some employees, however intelligent or talented they are, aren t assets. Structural capital is most easy to control because companies own it, but customers are where the money comes from.