The purchase of Lotus Notes by IBM is another example of how the full knowledge of an organization exists beyond traditional corporate valuation methods. IBM purchased Lotus Notes for 3.5 Billion dollars, while the book value of Lotus Notes was 1.5 Billion dollars. Thomas Stewart defines Intellectual Capital as packaged, useful, knowledge information, intellectual property, and experience can be put to use to create wealth. It is intellectual material that has been formalized, captured, and leveraged to produce a higher-valued asset. The dynamics between people, structures and customers is the raw material from which financial results are made.
Structural capital is the organizational capabilities to meet market requirements.
Structural capital is knowledge that doesn't go home at night. Customer capital is the value of an organization's relationship with the people with whom it does business. Brand equity is a form of customer capital. Bringing the Human, Structural and Customer Capital together in a way that transforms ideas, information, processes and relationships into intellectual wealth requires a synergistic knowledge strategy.