Nearly every business executive I speak with acknowledges that information has value and is a “critical corporate asset.” Yet scant few measure its value as if it were one. In our recent probe into information-centric companies, we learned that while we value plenty of amorphous or intangible assets including patents, trademarks and copyrights, and even have a formal fudge-factor for indiscernible corporate value: goodwill. However, the gatekeepers of GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) continu
Information as an Asset?
Hundreds of academicians over the past 50 years from have studied and demonstrated the role of information technology (IT) in driving business value, but what they have failed to do is separate the “I” from the “T”. As a physical asset, technology is easily given a value attribution and represented on balance sheets. But information , not so much. The timeline of accounting and technology milestones the past century reveals that the asset classes were established by the then-nascent SEC in the late 1930s,