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Invisible Advantage: How
Intangibles Are Driving Business Performance
By Jonathan Low and Pam Cohen Kalafut
Perseus Publishing, 2002.
Reviewed by Carol Moore
Invisible Advantage presents a case for the management of the
sources of intangible value inherent in every organization—value
often overlooked, to the detriment of the organization’s competitive
edge. Based on their research and experience as consultants in Cap
Gemini Ernst and Young’s Center for Business Innovation, the
authors have introduced a dozen of these “intangibles,”
including such design-related issues as communication, brand equity,
innovation, and reputation.
The book commences with an introduction to the “Intangibles
Economy” (which the authors define as that percentage of corporate
valuation derived from intangibles); each of the following chapters
is devoted to a single intangible, and each concludes with advice
on how to manage that particular issue. A short chapter at the end
of the book outlines five steps companies should take toward realizing
the value of their intangibles and achieving a competitive edge.
Grouped into three categories—leadership, relationships, and
“inside the company”—the authors provide an extensive
range of examples of intangibles in play within both old- and new-economy
companies representing a wide range of industries. Many of these
examples, such as Southwest, Amazon.com, Apple, and Saturn, will
be familiar to design managers, as their strategic use of design
has also been credited with a key role in their success. Nevertheless,
design is only occasionally mentioned throughout the text, and invariably
as a topic incidental to the primary issue discussed.
As the authors regularly point out, the perceptions of stakeholders
are important to the success of many of these intangibles. Since
design management is often described as the management of perceptions,
the role of design in such intangibles as brand equity and reputation
could have been a valuable contribution to the dialogue. Design
professionals, eager to have design managed as a strategic investment
rather than as a tactical expense, will need to make their voices
heard or face being left behind by other special interests more
advanced in communicating the value of their own particular sets
of intangibles. A book on the subject of design’s contribution
to the creation of intangible value, with charts, graphs, tables,
and images to clarify these concepts and research, could bring the
narrative to life and be an excellent strategic resource for design
managers.
This review originally appeared in the Winter
2003 Design Management Review
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