Wealth of Organization

Wealth of Organization

The most important asset of an organization is manpower. Intellectul capital has been the new  definition of an organization’s wealth. Without it, an organization won’t survive. Intellectual capital is knowledge, intangible assets provided to an entity by its employees' efforts and also knowledge assets such as patents, trademarks, copyrights, and other results of human innovation and thought.

Intellectual capital can include the skills and knowledge that a company has developed about how to make its goods and services.  It also includes insight about information pertaining to the company’s history; customers; vendors; processes; stakeholders; and all other information that might have value for a competitor that, perhaps, is not common knowledge.  Intellectual capital is therefore, not only organizational knowledge, it is also industry knowledge.  It is the combination of cognitive knowledge and intuitive/experience-related knowledge.

The problem today in many organizations is employee attrition through layoffs, resignations, retirements, and other forms of employee separation from the company. Employees have extensive knowledge about their job, the business processes, the data that supports their jobs including how to make things happen, and what works best.  Unfortunately, in most instances today their knowledge has not been captured, transferred, or made available to others.