Einstein in the Boardroom: Moving Beyond Intellectual Capital to I-Stuff [Hardcover]

Suzanne S. Harrison (Author), Patrick H. Sullivan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 14, 2006

Capitalize on Your Company's Intangible Assets...

Leading Companies Show You How

"Einstein in the Boardroom makes a great sequel to Edison in the Boardroom. Those readers who found the examples and war stories of Edison to be useful in their own IP-management activities will find the same qualities in Einstein. This resource will help anyone in the intangibles management community who seeks to go beyond intellectual property and understand and capitalize on the full range of a firm's intellectual capital."
--Julie Davis, coauthor, Edison in the Boardroom

"Harrison and Sullivan continue to elevate understanding of the value of intellectual assets and, more importantly, provide a 'clinic' on the practical steps necessary to turn theory into bottom-line results."
--Jeff Weedman, Vice President, External Business Development The Procter & Gamble Company

"Einstein in the Boardroom is a valuable guide for business managers considering how to leverage intangible assets for profit."
--Joe Beyers, Vice President, Intellectual Property Licensing, Hewlett-Packard Company

"Going deeper into value creation for companies, Einstein in the Boardroom describes new ways to extract value from 'I-stuff' on knowledge, a tremendous asset that is too rarely exploited and could be leveraged by all readers of this great book."
--Beatrix de Russe, Executive Vice President, Licensing and Intellectual Property, Thomson

"Einstein in the Boardroom is a must-read for CEOs, CFOs, and board chairs facing the financial governance issues of share price, wealth creation, and value realization. When today's financial management systems may only deal with 20 percent of the value of the firm, Harrison and Sullivan offer a look at what a company can do to successfully create and extract value from the 'other' 80 percent, and they show you how other companies have done it!"
--Bill Swirsky, Vice President, Knowledge Development The Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants

"Identifying, managing, and leveraging knowledge and intangible assets has enabled Cargill to differentiate itself from its competitors and increase its profitability. Harrison and Sullivan provide a clear perspective on how intangible assets fit within the corporate landscape and how to manage them to increase value for the organization."
--Harry J. Gwinnell, Vice President and Chief IP Counsel, Cargill

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Einstein in the Boardroom makes a great sequel to Edison in the Boardroom. Those readers who found the examples and war stories of Edison to be useful in their own IP-management activities will find the same qualities in Einstein. This resource will help anyone in the intangibles management community who seeks to go beyond intellectual property and understand and capitalize on the full range of a firm's intellectual capital."
—Julie Davis, coauthor, Edison in the Boardroom

"Harrison and Sullivan continue to elevate understanding of the value of intellectual assets and, more importantly, provide a 'clinic' on the practical steps necessary to turn theory into bottom-line results."
—Jeff Weedman, Vice President, External Business Development The Procter & Gamble Company

"Einstein in the Boardroom is a valuable guide for business managers considering how to leverage intangible assets for profit."
—Joe Beyers, Vice President, Intellectual Property Licensing, Hewlett-Packard Company

"Going deeper into value creation for companies, Einstein in the Boardroom describes new ways to extract value from 'I-stuff' on knowledge, a tremendous asset that is too rarely exploited and could be leveraged by all readers of this great book."
—Beatrix de Russe, Executive Vice President, Licensing and Intellectual Property, Thomson

"Einstein in the Boardroom is a must-read for CEOs, CFOs, and board chairs facing the financial governance issues of share price, wealth creation, and value realization. When today's financial management systems may only deal with 20 percent of the value of the firm, Harrison and Sullivan offer a look at what a company can do to successfully create and extract value from the 'other' 80 percent, and they show you how other companies have done it!"
—Bill Swirsky, Vice President, Knowledge Development The Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants

"Identifying, managing, and leveraging knowledge and intangible assets has enabled Cargill to differentiate itself from its competitors and increase its profitability. Harrison and Sullivan provide a clear perspective on how intangible assets fit within the corporate landscape and how to manage them to increase value for the organization."
—Harry J. Gwinnell, Vice President and Chief IP Counsel, Cargill

From the Inside Flap

How do you put a dollar value on the intangible? In today's knowledge-based economy, intangible capital, humancapital, intellectual assets, and intellectual property are critically important to the bottom line. However, traditional management, accounting, and budgeting processes are ill-equipped to set values on ideas, skills, and people. These managers must begin to think and act like Einstein by creating, and ultimately extracting, value from innovation.

A follow-up to the innovative and bestselling Edison in the Boardroom, which focuses primarily on intellectual property, Einstein in the Boardroom takes this groundbreaking concept one step further by focusing on the commercialization of "non-IP" intangibles. Working through the Value Continuumframework, Einstein in the Boardroom sheds new light on the evolving discipline of intangibles management by featuring dozens of case studies that illustrate how today's leading companies—including The Boeing Company, Eli Lilly and Company, Hewlett-Packard Company, The Procter & Gamble Company, Thomson, Visa International, and many others—are successfully implementing the strategy of extracting value from knowledge and know-how, first introduced by Edison, within their own companies, and how they are now taking it to the next level.

Encapsulating multidisciplinary ideas and best practices about intangibles developed by practitioners in the legal, knowledge, financial, R&D, human resources, measurement and reporting, economics, social, and environmental communities, Einstein in the Boardroom presents concrete methods, processes, and frameworks to help any firm manage and profit from its intangible assets.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (April 14, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 047170332X
• ISBN-13: 978-0471703327
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1 x 9.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,081,362 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Suzanne Harrison has been working with companies since 1988 to help them better utilize their intellectual property assets for value. She is the convenor of the ICM Gathering, a group of 25 companies that have been meeting 3x a year since 1995 to create, define and benchmark best practices relating to IP, IA and I-stuff. She is a Principal in the consulting firm Percipience LLC and continues to work towards more transparency and efficiency in the patent transaction marketplace.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Valuable resource for today's business world, June 8, 2006

By 

Marty J. - See all my reviews

This review is from: Einstein in the Boardroom: Moving Beyond Intellectual Capital to I-Stuff (Hardcover)

What I found most helpful was that Einstein in the Boardroom featured multiple case studies around commercializing IP with a rare peek behind the scenes of how companies are doing business in this area today. For example, there is an entire chapter about the dramatic culture change that occurred at P&G that has led to the company being "open for business" through its Connect + Develop initiatives (which was recently featured in March's Harvard Business Review), willing to collaborate and work with other companies. The examples provided are tangible, leading edge, and relevant.

Definitely helpful to those looking for new business models or to small/mid-size companies willing to work with a larger company and wondering how.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Useful practical advice from industry leaders, June 4, 2006

By 

E. F. Sherry (SF Bay Area) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Einstein in the Boardroom: Moving Beyond Intellectual Capital to I-Stuff (Hardcover)

The authors have identified key elements missing from previous discussions of the general topic, and have performed a very useful state-of-the-art survey and synthesis of the practices of leading-edge companies that are seeking to extract value from their intangible assets. Though I'm not a big fan of their "I-stuff" terminology (it's a bit too "cutesy" for my pedestrian tastes), the authors have clearly identified the ways in which the more traditional terms "intellectual property" and "intellectual capital" are too narrow to capture what is at stake.

Recommended for anyone working in the field, whether as a stand-alone work or as a worthy successor to "Profiting from Intellectual Capital" and "Edison in the Boardroom."

5.0 out of 5 stars Going Beyond IP to Realize the Value from your "I-Stuff", too, November 13, 2007

By 

Michael Pierantozzi (Menlo Park, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Einstein in the Boardroom: Moving Beyond Intellectual Capital to I-Stuff (Hardcover)

Advancing on the framework and practices from "Edison in the Boardroom" (which dealt more with IP), Harrison & Sullivan offer business managers, technologists, and IP attorney a new edge to manage intangibles, or more specifically the "I-Stuff", they defined as: "All of the organization's intangibles that are not codified as intellectual property (IP)."
They offer a view into your company's I-Stuff as a strategic business asset requiring new management practices to "realize the value".

Unlike others books on the subject, "Einstein" offers rare pragmatic advise with evidence-based outcomes from a community of IP-savvy companies on the benefits of becoming proactive in identifying, protecting and leveraging "I-Stuff" along with IP (of course) to address strategic business objectives. This book, and it's predecessor, "Edison", are useful for those implementing SARBOX compliance programs.