This work argues that knowledge has become the most important fact of economic life. It is the chief ingredient of what is bought and sold, the raw material people work with. In the new economy, intellectual capital - not natural resources, machinery or financial capital - has become the one indispensable asset of corporations. The volume shows how the emergence of the information age has changed the nature of wealth, and it offers new ways of looking at what companies do and how to lead them. In an economy based on knowledge, intellectual capital - the untapped, unmapped knowledge of organizations - has become a company's most useful tool. It is found in: the talent of the people who work there; the loyalty of the customers it serves and learns from; the value of its brands, copyrights, patents and other intellectual capital; and the collective knowledge embodied in its systems, management techniques and history - vital assets that are rarely managed and almost never managed skilfully. Readers should learn how to discover and map the human, structural and customer assets that are the knowledge based of a corporation; how General Electric, Hewlett-Packard, McKinsey, Merck & Co manage intellectual capital to improve performance; how intellectual capital can dramatically increase profitability; why the information economy demands new principles of managing people and working with customers; and how the knowledge economy affects readers personally, in their career, and how to capitalize on the opportunities it presents.