Knowledge has become the most important factor in economic life. It is the chief ingredient of what we buy and sell, the raw material with which we work. Intellectual capital--not natural resources, machinery, or even financial capital--has become the one indispensable asset of corporations. Intellectual Capital is a groundbreaking book, visionary in scope and immediately practical in application. It offers powerful new ways of looking at what companies do and how to lead them. This is the first book to show how to turn the untapped, unmapped knowledge of an organization into its greatest competitive weapon. It reveals how to unlock the value of hidden assets; how to find them in the talent of a company's people, the loyalty of its customers, and the collective knowledge embodied in an organization's culture, systems, and processes. And it shows how to manage these vital assets--which until now have largely been ignored.