Page 15 - Intangible value

A small business owner usually regards intellectual capital as a factor related to creative work and innovations, as li- censed rights in some elds, i.e. as a product. However, in practice the brand and the corporate culture are at least equally important parts of intellectual capital, although it may be more dif cult to picture them.
The majority of modern entrepreneurs know the basics of copyrights and indus- trial property reasonably well. Legal pro- tection of intellectual capital is an area in which practice and theory can be very different in the entrepreneur’s
The entrepreneur’s real intangible capi- tal is not only in the protected content or right but its core is in the way it is used: in what connection, for which customer group, in which context it has value. Those who both know this and can use this knowledge successfully are in a key posi- tion. Value is always customer-speci c. Intellectual property rights will rot in the safe unless the company knows its cus- tomers, their likings, behaviour, exibility with regard to prices and availability.
It is vital for the entrepreneur to recog- nise his or her customers and their wish-
the markets: both an expansion of the po- tential audience to global dimensions and the possibility to reach this audience more easily and faster than before. Of course, competition has followed the same path, and so has the decrease in unit prices.
Small business owners must know their target groups and breath the same air with them even more intensively than be- fore, when scarcity was the determining factor in the markets: on the one hand it was a hindrance but once the gatekeep- ers had been dealt with, there were few- er competitors. At best this knowledge
world. In Finland, we have gradu-
ally started to talk about patents
and copyrights as proper items
of property, but using them
and their behaviour is not that straightforward at all. Although
the systems protecting intellec-
tual property rights have developed fast, the world has developed even faster.
The large Chinese internet content provid- ers who I met at the turn of the millennium already took pride in being able to provide consumers with the same offering as their competitors within 24 hours. The same digital revolution that has opened up a huge marketing potential for copying with- out marginal costs also reduces the oppor- tunities available to holders of intellectual property rights. The fast ones will eat the slow ones. From the point of view of small business owners in creative industries, protection systems and the related admin- istration of rights and licences are empha- sised almost too much: it is true that one cannot sell something that one does not own but this is not the whole truth.
can be translated into money, i.e. the distributive trade may be interested in licensing the entrepreneur’s IPR not only because of their content but also because of the user in- formation related to them. For example, when selling formats
for TV programmes, the reference data, i.e. how successful the programme has been in different competitive environ- ments and on different TV channels, is as important as the description of the con- tent and the production method of the programme. This reference data reduces the buyer’s risk considerably.
Brands as well as brand development and re ning are becoming increasing- ly important; both product brands and company brands, as well as the product families and other similar entities be- tween them. Branding is increasingly the responsibility of the entrepreneur.
The core of the company i.e. corporate culture is perhaps the most important intangible capital. In an advanced form,
THE STRANGE BEHAVIOUR OF INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL IN THE LIFE OF AN ENTREPRENEUR
CONSULTANT MARKUS LEIKOLA / DELICATE SERVICES OY
Small business owners must know their target customers and breathe the same air as they do
es. The more intangible the products marketed are, the less it is a question of customer needs in the classical sense. As regards the media, entertainment and culture, people’s needs and wishes vary, their habits change and they become en- thusiastic about new things very quickly. Similarly, fan relationships may develop into deep long-term relationships.
Consumption habits and consequently distribution channels also change. The best known examples are CDs replacing vinyl records, download les replacing CDs, and download les in turn being re- placed by streaming, in which bits are not permanently transmitted from one place to another but cloud content is repro- duced by one’s own terminal device. All these changes have meant an increase in
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