Reading an intellectual capital statement: Describing and prescribing knowledge management strategies

This paper introduces a framework for analysing intellectual capital statements. It is suggested that the three‐way model of intellectual capital (human, organisations and structural) can be developed in its descriptive and its prescriptive qualities. Another model is offered which relate intellectual capital indicators to the firm’s knowledge strategy. This IC accounting system describes the transactions that allow the firm’s knowledge strategy to be implemented and it prescribes an agenda from which it is possible to monitor the effects around intellectual resources, to qualify and upgrade them and to survey the portfolio of intellectual resources. An example of Systematic Software Engineering’s two intellectual capital statements from 1999 and 2000 is used to illustrate how intellectual capital statements may be read from this perspective.