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| Working Paper #03 Intangible Asset
Monetization The Promise and the Reality Kenan
Patrick Jarboe Roland
Furrow Athena April
2008 Click here to download a PDF version of the full report Click here to download the Executive Summmary in PDF If you don't have the ability to read PDFs, get Acrobat now by clicking here. About Athena Athena Alliance is in the
vanguard of identifying, understanding, analyzing, and educating on the
information, intangibles, and innovation (I3 or I-Cubed) economy.
Information, knowledge, and other intangibles now power economic prosperity and
wealth creation. Intangible assets—worker skills and know-how, informal
relationships that feed creativity and new ideas, high-performance work
organizations, formal intellectual property, brand names—are the new keys to
competitive advantage. Intangibles and information drive our innovation
process, a combination of formal research and informal creativity. These
elements combine to produce productivity and improvement gains needed to
maintain prosperity. While the economic rules
have changed, public policy has not caught up. Governments are struggling with
ways to utilize information, foster development of intangibles, and promote
innovation and competitiveness in this new economy. Policymakers are grappling
with the urgent need to frame policy questions in light of the changing
economic situation. Issues of developing and
utilizing information, managing intangibles, and fostering innovation underlie
discussions on a variety of subjects, such as intellectual property rights,
education and training policy, economic development, technology policy, and
trade policy. Crafting new policies in these areas requires infusing a better
understanding of intangibles and the information economy into the public
debate. As a nonprofit public policy
research organization, Athena Alliance seeks to close the gap between the
changed economy and current public policy through activities to reshape the
debate and craft new solutions. Recent activities include working with the
District of Columbia to create an innovation-led economic development strategy;
co-hosting Congressional luncheon briefings; co-hosting a DC-based conference
on innovation in India and China with the National Academy of Sciences;
co-hosting a New York City-based conference on the financial reporting and
intangibles with the Intangible Asset Finance Society; and publishing policy
reports on intangible assets, including Reporting
Intangibles (2005) and Measuring
Intangibles (2007). Athena Richard Cohon, President,
C.N. Burman Company LLC—Chairman Kenan Patrick Jarboe,
Ph.D.—President Joan L. Wills, Director of
the Center for Workforce Development, Institute for Educational
Leadership—Secretary/Treasurer Jonathan Low, Partner and
Co-Founder of Predictiv, LLC—Board Member Acknowledgements The authors would like to
thank the many people who reviewed drafts of this paper and/or provided
invaluable insights and comments, including Richard Cohon, Jonathan Low, Mary Adams, William Murphy, Mary
McCue, Kimberly Cauthorn, Ian Lewis, Marc Lucier, Clark Eustace, Matthew
Hogg, Doug Elliott, Jay Eisbruck, Rory Radding, Annabel Bismuth, Weston Anson, Nir
Kossovsky, and Erika Fitzpatrick. The authors would also like to specifically
acknowledge the early work on this paper by Natividad Lorenzo, who provided
important foundation research for the project. Any errors or omissions are
solely the responsibility of the authors. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. To
view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/. Table of ContentsWhat are Intangible Assets and Why are They Important? Why are Intangibles Important? Do Intangibles
Matter to Corporate Strategy? Financing
Intangibles and Innovation Legal and Regulatory Frameworks Governing Intangible
Assets Financial
Accounting Standards |