If you are a business owner of any kind, think about the people that add value to you and your success. You need the manufacturing department to build or create a good product. You need the customer service department to always be responsive and polite to each of your customers. And finally, you need your marketing department to do thorough research so that you know who you are selling to and how best to reach them. The marketing department is the creative side of your company- the ones who will know how to best fit the words together, to not only drive interest but to finish or close the sale. The creative department may be able to weave the words together better than anybody else, and that is their intellectual capital, what they bring to the table for every meeting.

Intellectual capital is not always creative, however. Sometimes it is more esoteric, or sometimes it is more day to day. It does not always have to be the brilliant, one lined zinger of the advertising world that is considered to be intellectual capital. Sometimes it can be so much more. Perhaps Phil in accounting has a method of listing assets that saves fifteen minutes from each client’s ledger. If you have one hundred clients, then Phil has just saved your company around 25 man hours of time. Phil has increased productivity and as long as there is no decline in accuracy, it is a huge bonus to everyone.

The creative mind does not always have to be the one who is hired expressly for that purpose. When a company asks a freelance writer to write copy for them, they are not saying that they do not trust or believe in anyone in the organization, they are simply saying that they may not have the time to get the task done. Outsourcing a few articles or other information is a common enough practice and a very valuable one.

The marketing department is focusing on a new campaign for a tricky type of product. This one refuses to be marginalized or defined. There is no one set niche that is obvious to even the most experienced of the niche marketers. They are not sure of how to focus on this product because the demographics are so wide and scattered. They do not have time to create good content for the website so they outsource it. By default, they are creating a reciprocal intellectual capital relationship- the writer will have to do some basic research for the content they are being asked to create. Perhaps they will realize that they too have a need for this product as well. The content, once completed will serve to educate those who read it. Both the writer of the content and its eventual reader will establish an intellectual relationship where information is passed to the intended audience, whoever that may be.