By Touraj Nasseri Just imagine that your company is suddenly struck by a knowledge blight that erases all your corporate knowledge from the storage media including the employees' minds. The difference between the market values of the company before and after the blight struck is the value of the company's intellectual capital. This fact should be a compelling reason for organizational governance and management to nurture most diligently the people and the systems that create, preserve, disseminate, renew and deploy knowledge. In a company, as in an economy, physical and mental or intellectual capital generate all the economic wealth and value.
Intellectual capital is made up of human and knowledge capital.
Human capital comprises individual talents and knowledge that is acquired through education, training, experience, and cognition. Knowledge capital is the documented knowledge that is available in such forms as research papers, reports, books, articles, manuscripts,patents and software. Knowledge capital consists of the artifacts of the human mind that are also stored outside the minds of their authors, and can therefore be available to whoever seeks them. The effective interaction and integration of the two kinds of intellectual capital is essential for maximizing its productivity. Clearly intellectual capital is the fundamental input to all wealth generating processes.