Overview

How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't!

William Shakespeare, The Tempest

The last, but definitely not the least, pillar of Total Operations Solutions is Intellectual Capital. There is a widespread recognition of the need to manage knowledge, intellectual property and intangible assets, but there is no consensus in the extant literature as to the best way to measure such items. The measurement of intellectual capital is an area of further research and beyond the scope of this book. We explore a better understanding of the elements of intellectual capital and provide a framework for its assessment in the context of the competitive values of the total organization.

It is now accepted that the most successful companies are the ones who use their intangible assets better and faster (Bontis et al., 1999). Kaplan and Norton (2004) argue that unlike financial and physical assets, intangible ones are more difficult for competitors to imitate. They go on to say that employees' skill, IT systems and organizational cultures are worth far more to many companies than their tangible assets.

An organization becomes a winner over its competitors by attaining high performance with best practices and by sustaining it through the efforts of its people. Certainly innovation is a competitive weapon, but new product designs and formulations can be copied, and usually sooner than later. Likewise new technology and materials are procurable by competitors on an open market. The success factor for attaining and sustaining a high...