Your operating model turns other intangibles into value creators and includes business processes, organisational structures, goals and incentives, enabling capabilities and technologies that drive automation and asset utilisation. Like a fine motor, to derive maximum value your operating model has to be designed integrally and regularly tuned for efficiency, scalability and effectiveness.

Your ecosystem is your connection with the environment in which your organisation operates. This includes the strength and leveragability of your relationships with external parties, governments, regulatory bodies, suppliers, customers and more. Healthy ecosystem capital reduces costs, increases options, and improves flywheel capacity, resilience and scalability.

A strong brand connects you with your target market. Great brands embody positive customer experiences, appealing on emotional and rational levels. Brand assets aren't built by accident. Optimising your brand uplevels growth, guards against reputation risk, improves the predictability and volume of cashflows, creates access to markets and builds adaptive potential into your strategy.

Tiny companies have risen to become colossal global forces on the back of data alone. A product in its own right, strategically utilised data can become the intelligent engine room of your organisation, driving decision effectiveness, product-market fit, market adoption and operating efficiencies. With AI in play, you add a whole new dimension. Data is one of the most powerful future-proofing assets there is.

Knowhow is one of the keys to unlocking sustainable recurring revenue. It includes your trade secrets, IP, patents, copyright and other proprietary assets. But knowhow is vulnerable if it’s stuck in people’s heads or unprotected. Smart legal and people strategies can help here, as can careful operating model design.

Rights cover your entitlement to access an asset or opportunity now or in the future. They include regulatory approvals, licences, leases, decision rights, contracts and options to buy or access an asset or benefit later. Privileged, restricted or exclusive rights generate superior financial returns, mediated by market relevance and sustainable longevity.

People is talent and how people work together. Your people asset is your complete workforce: its agility, engagement, collaborative potential, productivity, resilience and learning capacity. The value-capture from a strong people asset is incomparable. But be warned: single person risk, exit risk, poor culture, or lack of access to the right people can cripple the value of all your other intangibles combined.

Your business model is the way your organisation creates, delivers and captures value. For scale-ups, it articulates your growth pathway and flywheel capacity. For mature businesses, it defines how you capture value from an established value chain or network. The most powerful business models can redefine the market itself. All business models have shelf lives: adaptability and optionality strengthen this asset.