The human at work is a rational/economic being who will trade human discretion and social interaction for money. Managers make decisions, control is assumed, training is task oriented. People act as extensions of machines. A person is a redundant part.

Managers live in ‘Philosophy, assumptions and theory=”The Talk”.
Employees live in organisation and practice. =”The Walk”.
Leaving assumptions and being present to take responsibility for what is said and and done is one of my biggest learning curves every day.

We strive to match Plato’s world view when we describe the intangible as follows: we interpret the world in terms of archetypes (good-bad, beauty-ugly, single-multi, intangible-tangible, asset-non-asset…).We strive to define it by using changeless absolutes and look for the essence of universal truth and structure about ‘intangible assets’.

We ask what is the precise relation between the pattern of ‘intangible asset’ and the empirical world of everyday reality. Why is this important to the way we do business 2000 years later?

In scholarly debate, intangible assets (IA) are often defined as…

…including those factors that are nonphysical sources of economical benefit and are rarely, if at all included in the firm’s financial statements… Intangible resources include intellectual property, culture, reputation and know-how. The researchers found that investment in these asset groups are indeed of competitive advantage to firms (Galvin & Galbreath 2006,152).

By ascertaining the underlying patterns of things we are researching the meaning of IA. We are actually chasing Plato’s archetype of IA, the ‘veiled essence of things‘ by looking at its embodiment in non-physical sources of intellectual property, culture, reputation and know-how.

Rational philosophy forms insights but it remains an example and representation and leads further down the track to classification and compartmentalization that is cutting off what businesses in the 21st century need the most- creativity and ideas.