TABLE OF CONTENTS Every professional discipline is subject to its own language. Mathematics, accounting, finance, economics, computer science, marketing, chemistry, and physics all have their own language with which practitioners can communicate with each other without the need to explain what they mean and what they are talking about. Like learning to play the piano, each profession requires immersion in a completely new professional language. At first, this language seems alien and daunting. As time progresses, the jargon turns into a shared understanding and the basis of communication with other professionals. Intangibles are no exception. To learn about intangibles requires new skills and a new language with which to describe the problems and solutions that intangibles have created.
A new language is required to explain intangibles because the old rules of conventional management, when applied to intangibles, typically create the opposite outcome of what is expected. Intangibles require a counterintuitive understanding that will allow us to identify, classify, measure, manage, and report intangible value.
This book represents the first consistent attempt to describe the new language of intangibles in a totally structured and logical manner. The study of intangibles has its own language, its own jargon, and its own technical terms. There is no way around this jargon. As you progress through this book, you will learn the new language of intangibles and find that the jargon assists you to better understand divergent areas.
The International Intangible Management Standards Institute (IIMSI) (http://www.standardsinstitute.org) is the world's leading standards-setting organization in the...
