Leveraging Intellectual Capital ” Building the "Club Med" of the Global Innovation Economy Sweden has made historic efforts to achieve an egalitarian society in wealth distribution, high levels of general education, and full employment within a democratic system. An individual's capabilities have traditionally been highly valued, respected, and cared for by the state and the country's employers . Even though the Swedish welfare state model did collapse in the beginning of the 1990s, followed by comprehensive waves of deregulation and other free-market reforms , the "new" Sweden nonetheless inherited a "human" approach to doing business, viewing the value of employees rather than their cost. Given the central importance of intellectual capital in a global Innovation Economy, the Swedish today find themselves further along the learning curve than some other nations, having for many decades propagated collaboration, flat hierarchies, and consensus-driven decision making. Today, as entrepreneurship, personal wealth creation, and other personal success stories have become accepted phenomena in Swedish society, the Swedish model has shifted from "protecting the individual" to "enabling the individual." The country has become a breeding ground for innovative management techniques and solutions focusing on making the most of a company's intellectual capital. According to the Swedish company Comintell, companies need to build "Intelligent Communities" to leverage the full potential of their employees by maximizing the collective experience. [14] Intelligent Communities combine the management of people and of information, balancing between the creativity of people and the structure of information. Comintell defines Intelligent Communities as "a network of trained knowledge workers who systematically work together to maximize the value of their combined knowledge." The management of Intelligent Communities differs from regular line management or project management in that it involves the management of people over whom the executive has no line authority over an indefinite period of time. Whereas Comintell has been successful in the Nordic countries , the company recently decided to close its London office, claiming that the U.K. market was not mature enough for its knowledge management solutions. U.K. executives were generally hesitant to accept the benefits of information sharing and the prevention of information overload, benefits that are widely acknowledged in Sweden. Leif Edvinsson, former director of the Skandia Future Center [15] and the world's first director of intellectual capital, was named 1998 Brain of the Year by the Brain Trust Foundation in England for his pioneering work in the field of IC. Mr. Edvinsson, who has recently founded the IC consultancy company Universal Networking Intellectual Capital (UNIC), [16] has developed tools to measure the intellectual capital of regions . Leif Edvinsson Measuring and cultivating the intellectual capital of regions The world has a certain amount of intellectual capital. However, there are different levels of efficiency with which the regions are accessing and utilizing their intellectual capital. Traditionally neglected but highly relevant when "regarding the future as an asset," [17] are the opportunity costs that are incurred when intellectual capital is left underutilized . Innovation hot spots around the world can be identified by using the measurement "value added per capita." This measurement highlights how well the employees are utilizing the structural capital and the infrastructure of the region to create value. Based on this value added, they are paid incomes, while generating dividends for shareholders and tax revenues for the government, which in turn forms the basis for future research and development. The big question is: what exactly drives this value added? In search of the answers to his questions, I have developed a tool to measure the IC of regions, which we are currently testing on Kista. [18] Maximizing the leverage of intellectual capital in a society is a complex endeavor, involving several dimensions that include a leadership dimension, a political dimension, and a technology dimension. The political dimension is of central importance. Key to the Swedish success story within this context were two points in time that enabled the region to set out on its path to become what it is today. The more obvious of the two points was when it became apparent to the outside world that there is a "wireless valley" in Sweden, which was the "attention point" in the media. This attention point was an article in Newsweek and just before that a conference at which Cisco and Microsoft announced that they would be investing in the region. When working with intangibles like intellectual capital, an effective attention point and subsequent media communication are important to build a brand around what is inside the "intangible region." Behind the scenes, the second key moment occurred when the political aspiration of turning the region into "something" materialized. This was the actual beginning of everything. Once the aspiration of a region is clearly defined, leadership or more specifically regional political cultivation is required in order to turn this aspiration into reality. The most important element of regional cultivation is to enable networking, and Kista still does not have enough of it, even though the Electrum Foundation in Kista has been playing the role of the regional cultivator. This might be astounding since networking is a societal paradigm in Sweden, but the existing networks in Stockholm and Kista are still too ad hoc and task oriented. They are not nourished in the same way as in Silicon Valley, where numerous institutions like First Tuesday provide a conceptual and physical arena for networking and a master of ceremony moderating each event. How long is the life cycle of a network? It is very short if it is merely task oriented. It is the ongoing interplay between people that nourishes innovation. Someone has to bring on this interplay , and Club Med with its concept of the "gentil organisateur" is a good example. In other words, for a region to become successful, network facilitation requires two elements: a "producer" in charge of providing the platform or infrastructure for interaction, as well as a "director" in charge of placing the right people in the right positions on this platform. In this way, value added can be derived from the interaction between the network's members . Landscaping is critical in order to enable the cultivation of innovation. Whereas most plans for science parks are based on industrial work plans, experience has shown that knowledge workers dislike this kind of environment. They need open space, nature, and water in order to create a collective experience. Research at Skandia Future Center has revealed that the water dimension is indeed critical. In this context, the concepts of traditional harbors and knowledge harbors are linked. In most places, the harbor is the ugliest area in the city, except for San Francisco, where it was turned into a beautiful area starting 20 years ago. If you were going to describe a leading harbor for the flow of intangibles, what kind of a landscape would you locate it in? How do you design knowledge harbors? While these questions remain to be answered , they indicate that many existing industrial infrastructures might well be unsuited for the leveraging of intellectual capital in the globally linked innovative digital economy. Now suppose you have beautiful landscape, you have the tech infrastructure, you have people, you have the brand ” who is going to connect all of these factors in order to generate higher value added per capita? That is where I think we should focus in terms of creating what I call "political entrepreneurship." It seems to be lacking in most regions. Most political leadership today is maintenance rather than entrepreneurship. We train business entrepreneurs but where do we shape political entrepreneurs? Singapore has renamed the Ministry of Labor to the Ministry of Manpower. The value added per capita in Singapore is very high. Think about that. | |
