INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL

MEASUREMENT AND
HOLISTIC VALUE
APPROACH (HVA)

AUTHORS:

Dr. Steve Pike

Ind. Prof. G ran Roos

PUBLISHED IN:

W O R K S I N S T I T U T E J O U R N A L (J A P A N )
Volume 42. Oct - Nov 2000 www.works-i.com

Intellectual Capital Services (ICS) Ltd.

6th Floor, Bouverie House
154-160 Fleet Street
London, EC4A 2DQ
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 207 694 6100
[email protected]
ICS Ltd, 2000 All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any
means without the prior permission of ICS

INTRODUCTION
Over the past decade, the rapidly growing realisation of the importance of intangible assets and
intellectual capital as a whole in the operation of organisations has led to the need to manage
companies in a new way and to measure their performance in a new way. With more than 50
books on the subject by various authors, many with incompatible views, what should managers
do?

It is not just companies seeking clarity; the effect of changes in business on national life has led
to governments taking a keen interest in economic development in the new economy (DTI,
1998, 1998). In the markets, it is a well-known argument that the dominating factor in company
valuation for most companies now and especially the hi-techs and dotcoms is intellectual capital.
In the US, 5% of company capitalization is accounted for by the dotcom companies, that is,
about $1 trillion and this valuation is not built upon profit yielding sales or physical capital but on
stories (Lightman, 2000). Elsewhere it is a similar story and one that will continue over the next
decade. It is estimated that over 25% of companies that can be expected to be listed in the
FTSE 100 in 2010 do not exist at present and these will be dominated by the dotcoms and hitechs (Foresight, 2000).

Through most of the 1990s the lack of a common language with which to communicate issues
has been one of the most insidious reasons why progress in describing companies intellectual
capital characteristics to others and managing them effectively internally has been slow. The
characteristics and potential of people, known as human capital, comprises different things to
different people and even at a fundamental academic level, there has been little evidence of
clarity. This is not peculiar to intellectual capital management; it also appears in the area of
knowledge management. For example, there are at least eight different categories for knowledge
in common use (Von Krogh, Roos and Kleine, 1998). Aside from the problems of
communicating meaning, management models and the results they give and the subsequent
actions managers choose to take also lack the clarity and obvious logic that they might
otherwise have. A look at the review documents such as those by the conferencing groups
highlights the problems and also shows the development from Balanced Scorecards and
Human Resource Accounting to the most recent thinking on managing the new economy
(Business Intelligence, Skyrme, 1998). Happily, in the last two years or so there has been a
steady convergence in categorisation and language onto a single model. Figure 1 shows the
emergent definitions.
2

Intellectual Capital

Human Capital

Attributes of the
people such as,
intellect, skill,
creativity, the way
they work.

Organisational Capital

Company-owned
items such as
systems, IP,
processes,
databases, values,
culture.

Relational Capital
External relations
with customers,
suppliers, partners,
networks,
regulators etc.

Figure 1 Categories of intellectual capital (after Roos 1997)

This diagram is only a guide to the components of intellectual capital as the elements combine
and interact with each other and with traditional capital elements (physical things and monetary
elements) in ways unique to individual companies to create value. In addition, the equation in
figure 2, while useful in drawing attention to intellectual capital, is incorrect from more than one
point of view and management models and accounting schemes based upon it will necessarily
be flawed since the variables are not separable as required by the equation.

Market Value = Book Value + Intellectual Capital

Figure 2 Intellectual Capital & Market Value

Additionally, the obvious accounting flaw is that the right hand side of the equation does not have
a single set of units. Virtual and real money cannot be added to each other (Justice, 1707).

MANAGEMENT AND MEASUREMENT

Through history, man has evolved from being a hunter-gatherer, through agricultural society and
industrial society and now into a knowledge-based society. In business, there is a parallel and,
as with man, all four forms exist today. See figure 3 for examples.

Business /

Attributes

Characteristic statement

Society
Hunter-

Aggressive, hand-to-

We are a successful and profitable company. We

gatherer

mouth, meets local

depend on our first-rate sales force to maintain us

needs, no reserves,

but do not have a broad product base. We have a

mobile, people are

stable core of people to guide company

expendable.

development.

Docile, stationary, has

We provide a service for customers who are always

reserves, meets local

going to be there and are, in a sense, local. Our

and some distant

staff are broadly but not highly skilled and our

Agricultural

needs, people are tools. procedures are well set out and adhered to. Quality
is our watchword.
Industrial

Knowledge

Cost conscious,

The company has thrived and survived recession by

efficient, meets area

careful cost control, process re-engineering and

needs, many suppliers

careful attention to customer satisfaction. We are a

may own distribution

volume producer with major production plants. We

network, people are

have a network of tied distributors. Our brands are

costs.

well known.

Creative, agile, knows

We thrive through our ability to stay at the leading

what it knows, knows

edge of customer needs and product design. To do

customer and values,

this we convert our staffs talents as best we can

involved suppliers and

and have an extensive network of partners. Our

distributors, electronic

marketing and electronic presence gives us a global

presence, people are

position.

assets.

Figure 3 Evolving business types (after Pike, Rylander & Roos 2000)
4

Interestingly, as the business society has developed, the key step in value creation has
ascended an intellectual staircase. The key elements have evolved through just being there, to
physical capital dominated to organisational capital dominated and now to human capital
dominated. It could be argued that agricultural and industrial societies required human capital
too, however, in these societies the use of humans tended to be as extensions of machines
rather than as assets employing the intellectual capital attributes of humans such as intellectual
agility and creativity.

Management models have also evolved but there has been a key difference in the transition to
the knowledge economy. The difference is not that yet further items have been added to the
balance sheet or recorded as costs in the profit and loss statement but that people are now also
assets with an indeterminable value as far as standard accounting is concerned. Furthermore,
the knowledge they have embodied into processes has a value that may be known as far as the
owning company is concerned but, when traded, has a value dependent on the context of use of
the buyer and this varies from buyer to buyer.

One obvious approach to management and measurement is to try to retain as much of the
rigour of conventional accounting by adjusting its traditional instruments. Where people believe
this to be impossible, they have resorted to measuring new things but retaining the forms of
conventional accounting. The alternative to this is to abandon traditional accounting and base
measurement and management on the attributes of the value generating processes of individual
companies. The question is whether either of these approaches can meet the need in an
auditable, useful and secure way. This means a measurement regime that gives managers the
levers necessary to guide the business while not instilling unwanted behaviours through
measuring the wrong things nor imposing a heavy burden of measurement of people who have
better things to do. There are a number of intellectual capital measurement/management
methodologies available now (ESPRIT, 2000). To assess the relative effectiveness of different
approaches to measurement and management it is necessary to have some criteria by which
they may be judged. For example:

1.

Is it auditable and reliable?

2.

Is it easy to use and does it impose a large measurement overhead?

3.

Does it facilitate strategic and tactical management?

4.

Does it generate the information needed by shareholders and investors?

AUDITABLE AND RELIABLE

If managers are to make judgements on measurements then they need confidence that the
information they have can be relied on. Even if the interpretation of that information may differ
from one manager to another, the source must be unimpeachable. Traditional accounting
generally offers that quality for monetary capital and, to a considerable extent, physical capital.
However, valuations of physical capital are problematic since their intrinsic value is calculated
through a depreciation process and this is very hard to recoup at sale and the extrinsic value is
inextricably bound up with companies business processes. With either physical or monetary
value, the danger for managers attempting to make business decisions is that the actions they
take may be based on extrapolations beyond the zone of validity for the data. A common
example is to make some direct link between investments costs, such as for R&D with the value
of that R&D.

Intangible assets are not additive in nature and their measurement is open to semantic debate
so it is important that a rigorous approach to measurement is taken and measurement theory
offers it. Adherence to measurement theory (Krantz, 1971) provides a means by which nonfinancial measurement systems can attain the same (or better) degrees of rigour as financially
based ones. The key requirements are that the measurement system and its constituent
elements are:

1.

Complete in coverage,

2.

Distinct and free from overlaps,

3.

Preference independent with respect to one another,

4.

Observable,

5.

Measurable and

6.

Agreeable in that they are an agreed measure of the attribute.

Measurement and the consequent management of intellectual capital based on lists of attributes,
which have not been thoroughly subjected to this rigour, carry with them the danger of
unexpected and unwanted consequences.

MEASUREMENT OVERHEAD AND EASE OF USE

This is an entirely practical point in that measurement schemes tend to grow uncontrollably. Two
dangers emerge from over measurement. The first is that the cost of data collection far
outweighs the benefits of having it and that its collection also causes considerable irritation
amongst those doing the measurement and those being measured especially if the redundancy
of the measurement is obvious. The second is that management based on over measurement
leads to justified accusations of micro-management and the tendency to instil unwanted
behaviours. This latter point arises since people tend to want to improve performance and will
tend to focus on many trivial elements in an over-elaborate measurement system. In doing this
they loose sight of the bigger and more important picture.

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
This criterion reaches to the heart of the problem. If a measurement and management scheme
is to be of any real value then it must give managers a means of translating their strategic intent
into appropriate actions and feedback information showing whether these actions are working or
not. Managers can affect the performance of their businesses at two levels. Firstly, at the
organisational level where they affect how the processes of value creation in the company are
interconnected. The second is that they can encourage improvements in individual or groups of
processes at an operational level. Examples of the first are through strategic alliances and
positioning while examples of the second are investments in soft assets and conditions.

If measurement is to support management effectively then the measures have to be dominated

by those that look forward (Van Buren, 1999). Here lies one of the principle weaknesses of
accounting-based methodologies of intellectual capital management. Accounting is based on
historical transactions and is thus dominated by lagging measures.

In contrast, methodologies for managing intellectual capital based on a business approach

should suffer from none of the intrinsic weaknesses of financially based management methods.
There are, however, serious deficiencies that can considerably degrade the usefulness of these
approaches. The most common of these is the measurement of stocks of intangible assets in
the belief that they constitute value. Stocks represent the potential to create value and unless the
measurement of potential is the specific and limited aim (Pulic, 2000) then management will be
misguided in using such approaches to manage intellectual capital. Value is created when stock
7

is employed (and degrades when it remains unused) so the attributes that must be measured
are either influence if the importance of value creation pathways are the goal or influence and
flow if some attempt is to be made at relative or even absolute value. The important distinction
here is that what flows is not necessarily of value and what is influential in creating value might
be a small flow of something very important (the concept of flows was introduced by Roos et
Roos 1997).

Business based models offer management many insights. Even the simpler stock models have
some use in that, in the absence of other complicating factors, levels of stock and consequent
performance can be benchmarked between companies. Influence models are particularly
powerful since the counterpart of influence is control and control and facilitation are at the heart
of management. By employing Humes fork reasoning (Hume) what is desired in terms of
companies strategic intent (what ought to be) can be compared with the way a company is
actually operating (what is). The influence diagram that results from mapping the important
connections between classes of intellectual capital, usually known as a navigator, becomes a
powerful and visual tool for management to use to determine where real value is created in a
company and where it is destroyed. The natural counterpart of control informs management of
the changes necessary and possible to improve performance and since strategy is forward
looking, so too is the navigator approach. For a practical example of this, see for example the
article (Roos G and K. Jacobsen) or the article (Roos, G. and F. Lvingsson).

There are very few influence and flow models at present. A reliable navigator-based approach to
business management, which combines both flow and influence, remains the goal for many.
The HVA (Holistic Value Added) methodology, a combination of a Navigator and the
axiology/measurement theory approach, is probably unique in the influence and flow field.

Having mentioned dotcom companies and hi-tech start-up companies in the introduction, it is
worth noting that they require no special treatment as far as intellectual capital management
methodologies are concerned. Dotcoms do however represent an extreme situation and hence
they are worthy of discussion to demonstrate that intellectual capital measurement and
management models extend easily to cover them. In terms of practical measurement, as the
intellectual capital elements are the same but with different emphasis, extra care is care is
required in defining the measurements necessary to give managers the information needed to
guide the performance and development of the company.

SHAREHOLDER INFORMATION
In order to communicate with stakeholders outside the company, you must have information to
communicate and that the information is in the form and language that the stakeholder
understands. For a long time the only information that seems to have been required by
stakeholders to be reported in a standardised form in most companies has been company
performance in financial terms. The exception to this has been those companies or agencies
involved in delivering public services. For them, financial stability has been a key performance
indicator but along with that have been the quality, level and extent of the service that has been
provided. In the knowledge era, the concept of stakeholder or even shareholder value extending
beyond simple financial performance measures is a crucial change. To communicate with
stakeholders now requires a deeper understanding of the attributes of value from the point of
view of the stakeholder groups. Internally in the company this means that the managements
strategy must be more sophisticated and the levers that management pull to improve their
business that much more numerous and complex. For a more in depth discussion on this see
for example: (Rylander, A., Jacobsen, K. and G. Roos).

Understanding and being able communicate the attributes of value requires that management
and their models have a grounding in axiology, a branch of philosophy that developed in
Germany and Austria in the 19th century (Rescher, 1969) and states that within a well-defined
context; discussions of value can take place. The key step is to connect the possibilities of
axiology with the rigour of measurement theory (MPherson, 1996). Managers then have the
potential of a methodology, in which the impact of strategic decisions on all stakeholder groups
can be assessed in advance of their implementation. This does not mean that the problems are
all solved and the future is laid bare. Uncertainty in data and risk introduced by the actions of
outsiders such as regulators, suppliers, partners, governments, not to mention the actions
competitors all conspire to make the results less than certain. The art of strategic management
remains.

These then are the tests and requirements of a truly comprehensive intellectual capital
management and measurement scheme. Although some approaches come close to providing a
holistic approach, only HVA comes close to providing it. Let us see how the options for
management compare using the criteria and then see how HVA works.

MAIN
CRITERIA

TEST

Financially
based,
e.g. EVA

1st
generation
IC and
BBS

Auditable
and reliable

Data meets a
standard
Data addresses
looks at the
right time frame
Low
measurement
overhead
Easy to initiate
and use
Allows multilevel
management

Yes

Overhead
and ease of
use

Strategic
management

Shareholder
information

Measures
stock, flow and
influence
Provides data
at all levels in
the company
Engages all the
value attributes
of all
stakeholders

3rd
generation
IC,
HVA

No

2nd
generation
IC,
e.g. IC
Index
Partial

Partial

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Moderate

Moderate

Moderate

Yes

Yes

Moderate

Moderate

Partial

Yes

Yes

Stock

Does not
allow tradeoff
decisions
Stock

Stocks and
influence

Partial

Yes

Yes

Stock, flow
and
influence
Yes

No

No

Partial

Yes

Yes

HVA
As with many problems, the solution has to be found by looking outside the area that created the
problem. So it is with the effective management and measurement of intellectual capital. In this
case, the solution has come from the engineering field rather than from the fields of the social
sciences. Mathematicians and those who deal with the physical sciences live with entities with
multi-dimensional attributes as a matter of course and have developed some elegant
methodologies to visualise them and deal with them.

The Holistic Value Approach (HVA) combines Gran Roos (chairman ICS Ltd) IC Index and
10

Philip MPhersons (joint R&D Director ICS Ltd) IVM (Inclusive Value Management) and draws
on substantial contributions from Stephen Pike (Joint R&D Director ICS Ltd.). The HVA model is
a based on the view that a narrow asset perspective, using traditional accounting methods
without considering the usefulness of these in business performance is of little use for a
strategic management tool. HVA acts as an extendible and flexible search framework and

database for financial and intangible assets, also referred to as a Business Value Model. The
superimposed IVM acts as the multi-dimensional accounting system that measures and
combines the financial and intangible contributions using the value contexts of all stakeholders
individually. Figure 4 outlines the HVA approach in the context of valuing a business.

Identify the stakeholders

Outline strategic intent
by stakeholder
Discover all objectives

Obtain objective weights

of stakeholders

by stakeholder

Expand objectives into

Obtain stakeholder

measurable attributes

attribute characteristics

Strategic alignment

Find the real company

value creation path
Measurement

Consolidation & partition

Consolidation & partition

into financial dimension

into IC dimension

Produce combined
value surface

Evaluate using stakeholder

value dimensions

Figure 4 The HVA

11

Input from senior management level is required to initially identify key stakeholders and to outline
the organizations strategic intent, the role it plays and the values it delivers. The development of
the value hierarchy and the measurement of attributes can only be completed by operational
staff, as it requires immersion in the day-to-day business operations. This activity is then used to
identify two sets of variables for each stakeholder: one is the set of weights that describe the
relative importance of each objective to the stakeholder; the other is the behaviour of the
measuring attributes.

Once the attributes of value have been identified, a parallel can be initiated. What is sought is the
nature of flows and influences between these attributes, that is, the identification of the value
creating pathways in the business. Whereas the early activities derive from the IVMTM , this set
derives from the IC Index. The outcome of this process is a navigator that visualizes how value
is really created in the organization.

The strategic alignment is the stage when the previous phases are brought together and the
indicators are attached to the value-creating path, this means assigning the different key
performance indicators to the different stocks and flows in the navigator. This reveals whether
the previously articulated strategy, on which the key success factors and key performance
indicators are based, are in alignment with the way the organization creates value on a daily
basis the picture displayed in the navigator. In other words, it provides a reality check of both
strategy and value creating path.

A model of the business as a value generator is an essential prerequisite for understanding the
exchange relationships between the various forms of value and cost. Business models regard
the process, activities and outputs of the organisation as value generators and distinguish
carefully between the value generated internally by the organisations activities and the value
realised externally. Typically, the organisation generates value internally through:

1. The values and quality of the corporate Governance;

2. Effectiveness of the deployed intellectual capital;
3. Effectiveness of the resulting activities, processes and operations that produce the
output of the organization, including essential sub-contracted input and outsourced
activities;
4. Quality of compliance with regulatory standards;

12

5. Costs (negative value) the inclusive capital and operational costs of all the value
generated internally + costs of information to and from the external environment + the
costs of negative environmental and social impacts.

The external environment awards value through:

1. Revenue from the sale of products and services;
2. Customer value added after purchase (over the life-cycle of use);
3. Employee value added after receipt of salary and financial benefits;
4. Stakeholder value added;
5. Assessments of regulators and professional interests, especially financial analysts;
6. Assessments of the environmental and social impacts resulting from the existence of the
organization, its activities, its outputs and discharges;
7. Awareness raising by opinion-formers and special interest groups concerned with ethical
and environmental matters;
8. Reports from the media and public opinion.

Internal and external values are then grouped within the definition of Inclusive Value. Inclusive
Value consists of two main categories: financial value and non-financial value. The former is
completely conventional and uses the net present value of costs or cash flows or the option of
costs or cash flows. The non-financial value is divided into the value of the performance
achieved with respect to operational objectives and the value resulting from the many
assessments of external agencies that judge the systems achievements with respect to their
own objectives.

While calculations in the financial dimension is easy since elements are additive in nature,
calculations in the value dimension are not. Combinations of intangible value are performed
using a standard set of combinatorial rules and practices consistent with measurement theory
and axiology normalised in the range [0,1], where 0 means that not one of the intangible feeds
has registered any value at its host, and 1 means that all intangible feeds have achieved their
targets completely. In between is a proper measure indicating an order-preserving shift for any
incremental change in a value feed, or combinations thereof.

The final step is to combine financial and intangible value in a combinatory value space, and
then, by back projection into the accountancy space, indicate the financial equivalent of the
intangible contributions to a cash flow stream. To visualize the combination we make use of a 3
dimensional space where normalised monetary value defines the y-axis and intangible value

13

defines the x-axis. The overall combined value resulting from the combination is displayed
vertically as combined value added (the z-axis). The actual value combination takes place in the
form of a canonical combinatorial rule by which the two financial and intangible inputs are joined
to provide the combined output. A range of output analyses are possible for example: the relative
contribution to value (intangible, financial or combined) of individual elements; return on
investment projections, the effects of stakeholder value of development options, value for money
and cost benefit analyses.

FINALLY
Summing up, every business generates value in some form or another, otherwise it would not
exist. Value, simply stated, is a matter of definition. If it can be defined in its separate parts, it can
be measured. The study of axiology shows us that value is defined with reference to an agreed
context. Our research has delivered a scientific approach to the measurement of value that, in
effect, is a measure for the distance between present achievement and complete achievement.
The HVA model is different from all the others in that it is a generic measuring instrument rather
than an assessment process. As such, the methodology is more rigorous and complete. The
entire process is one that displays the benefits of being transparent, axiomatic, and auditable
and yields the same result regardless of who does it. In practical situations, it may sometimes
be sufficient with Pareto versions of the formal rigorous approach. These Pareto versions are
also developed but are not covered in this paper.

A further advantage of a generic approach is that the tool has a very wide range of applicability.
There are a great many documented differences between the ways companies work in the West
compared to the East. These differences arise from the culture of the individual, the values of the
company, the relationships companies form with other companies and, of course, the local
accounting principles. IC makes no prior assumptions about any of these and so it can be
applied without special caveats, indeed, if the value context used by the selected IC-tool, e.g.
HVA, in an assessment is global in nature then at least the n
i tangible value elements of
stakeholders can be compared globally.

14

REFERENCES
1.

UK Department of Trade and Industry (Future Unit)

Converging

Technologies:

Consequences for the Knowledge-Driven Economy, 1998.

2.

UK Department of Trade and Industry

Our

Competitive

Future:

Building

the

Knowledge-Driven Economy, 1998.

3.

A. Lightman

The

Myths

that

Support

Massive

Internet

Market

Caps,

Services

Panel

IntellectualCapital.com 2000. http://www.intellectualcapital.com/

4.

UK

Department

of

Trade

and

Industry,

Foresight

Financial

Financing the Enterprise Society, HMSO, 2000

5.

G. Von Krogh, J. Roos, D. Kleine

6.

D. Skyrme

Knowing in Firms, Sage, 1998

Business Intelligence Report: Measuring the Value of Knowledge, 1998.

http://www.business-intelligence.co.uk/
7.

A. Justice

Treatise on Monies and Exchanges, 1707

8.

EU/ESPRIT 4, KnowNet: Knowledge Management with Intranet Technologies, Project

EP28928, 2000 http://www.know-net.org/

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D. Krantz, R. Luce, P. Suppes, A. Tversky, Foundations of Measurement, Academic

Press, 1971

10.

M. Van Buren, A Yardstick for Knowledge Management, American Society for Training
and Development, 1999

11.

VAICTM An Accounting Tool for IC Management, University of

A. Pulic,

Graz, 2000. http://www.measuring-ip.at/Papers/ham99txt.htm

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G. Roos, J. Roos,

Measuring

Your

Companys Intellectual Performance,

Journal of Long Range Planning, Vol 30, No. 3, 1997

13.

D. Hume

(An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Edited by L. Selby-Bigge,

Oxford University Press, 1902).

14.

Roos G and K. Jacobsen Management in a Complex Stakeholder Organisation; A case

study of the application of the IC-Process to a Branch of the Commonwealth Public
Service, Monash Mt. Eliza Business Review, Vol 2, Number 1, July 1999

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Roos, G. and F. Lvingsson El Proceso CI en el Nuevo Mondo de las

Telecomunicacionel, in Gell, A. M. (ed.), Homo faber, homo sapiens La gestin del
capital intelectual, Ediciones del Bronce, 1999.

16.

Rylander, A., Jacobsen, K. and G. Roos Towards Improved Information Disclosure on

Intellectual Capital, International Journal of Technology Management, Forthcoming
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Summer 2000.
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N. Rescher, An Introduction to Value Theory, Prentice Hall, 1969.

18.

P. MPherson, Business Value Modelling, Globalisation of Information: 48th Conference

and Congress of the International Federation for Information and Documentation, Graz,
Austria, 1996.

16