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 practical in applications, that offers powerful new ways of looking at what companies do and how to lead them. It is the first book to show how to turn the untapped, unmapped knowledge of an organization into its greatest competitive weapon. Intellectual Capital cuts through the vague rhetoric of "paradigm shifts" to show how the Information Age economy really works--and how to make it work for you and your business. Readers will learn how to discover and map the human, structural, and customer capital that embody the knowledge assets of a corporation; how successful companies manage their intellectual capital to improve performance; how intellectual capital can free-up financial resources to dramatically increase profitability; why the rise of the "knowledge worker" leads to new principles of managing people; how the knowledge economy affects each of us personally in our careers and how to capitalize on the opportunities it presents. Intellectual Capital should be read as if the future of our companies and our careers depend on it. They probably do.