BSR - Intangible Assets & CSR
27 November 2006 at 1:49 pm
While the Financial Times was reporting that the world’s biggest accounting firms had joined forces to call for a radical overhaul of how companies report performance, the BSR Conference in New York saw this as recognition of what the current accounting systems don’t value.
Jonathan Low in his presentation “Unlocking Hidden Value: Intangible Assets & CSR” told his audience that intangible assets like leadership skills, innovation, brand reputation, trade marks, IP and employee knowledge can represent as much as 75% of a firm’s value.
Yet these drivers of corporate performance were not on the balance sheets.
Low says understanding the nature of intangibles and the ways that responsible business can strengthen and measure them effectively holds great promise.
He says most companies have about 70% of the information needed on intangible assets but it was not generally shared by the departments at a corporate level.
Jonathan Low is Managing Director of CCW Inc., and author of “Invisible Advantage”.
Jonathan Low has worked with corporate clients of all sizes in North America and Europe, and has directed four major research reports on the role of intangibles in the global economy: Measures That Matter, Success Factors in the IPO Transformation Process, Decisions That Matter, and The Value Creation Index.
His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes, BusinessWeek and other publications.
