Not surprisingly, the strategic objective sets up the goals for organisation and provides direction and guidance on intellectual capital management. To enable effective knowledge management to occur, a knowledge management methodological approach must be employed through the whole process and be understood by people involved at all levels of organisation. The diagram above shows the intellectual capital system that incorporates six components. This intellectual capital system provides a systematic and methodological approach for an organisation to manage and measure its intellectual capital. The first component, the most important, is the strategic objective of the organisation that guides the direction and indicates what kinds of intellectual capital are important for the firm.
Traditional management looks at technologies, systems, and people separately.
However, effective knowledge management should treat three of them as an integrated system, with a people focus. Therefore in the centre of an intellectual capital system is the people component. That is the most important aspect of intellectual capital system given the role knowledge workers are playing in knowledge management activities. Besides the component of people, there are two integrated management and measurement systems. Management systems aim to catch, store, evaluate, and use intellectual capital, while measurements system provides metrics to measure the effectiveness of the management processes.