More of my observations on the U.S. National Academies conference on Intangible Assets: Measuring and Enhancing Their Contribution to Corporate Value and Economic Growth. and the presentations  made that day.

There were two panel discussions on the role of government around intangibles. Many of the presentations were rich with data, and I recommend them to those interested in the macroeconomic aspects of intangibles.

Douglas Lippoldt, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) made a clear case for governments and organizations like the OECD to focus on intellectual assets as:

• They are central to value creation, economic growth and competitiveness in a modern economy.
• Continued shortfalls in measurement and understanding of intangibles has implications for decision making
• IA relationship to innovation, as inputs and outputs needs to be understood
• There are significant possibilities to leverage these assets for acceleration in development

R&D was the focus of presentations by John Jankowski, Science Resources Statistics Division of the National Science Foundation, and Steve Landefeld, Bureau of Economic Analysis at the Department of Commerce. Landefield explained the significant shift in how research and development gets done today versus the way it was done in the 1950-70’s. Today, more research is done at the corporate level (although not just in large companies) while less basic research is done at the corporate level; basic research has moved to academia. The focus of R&D today is much more on IT, services and is global. These changes speak to the need for new approaches to measurement of R&D, an effort that is currently underway.

Ahmed Bounfour, Paris-Sud University, gave a dense overview of activities in different regions of the world (other than North America). Nir Kossovsky, Steel City Re, explained the role of reputational risk in the value of intangibles.

Kenan Jarboe, Athena Alliance, presented a detailed estimate of the U.S. government’s spending on intangibles of $204 billion in 2006. Of this, $122 billion was in R&D. The remainder was in development of human, reputational and organizational capital. Jarboe also outlines the beginning of an intangibles policy agenda including expanding definition of investment tax credits from capital to intangible assets. He also identified many measures which will help support the growth of markets for intangibles, such as registries of security interest in intangibles.

All in all, The National Academies conference on Intangible Assets was a great start to what I hope will be a new chapter in the U.S. focus on the resources that will make or break our collective future. But there is still much work to do. Stay tuned here for lots more ideas and information.