Measuring the strategic readiness of intangible assets.

Measuring the value of intangible assets such as company culture, knowledge management systems, and employees' skills is the holy grail of accounting. Executives know that these intangibles, being hard to imitate, are powerful sources of sustainable competitive advantage. If managers could measure them, they could manage the company's competitive position more easily and accurately. In one sense, the challenge is impossible. Intangible assets are unlike financial and physical resources in that their value depends on how well they serve the organizations that own them. But while this prevents an independent valuation of intangible assets, it also points to an altogether different approach for assessing their…