In this video, we're going to talk about
important concept intellectual capital.
This concept sheds really important
light on our professional careers and our
career trajectory. So let's get into the details.
Hello there and welcome back I'm
Alex Lyon and if this is the first time
tuning in to this channel,
Communication Coach is here to help
rising leaders, probably professionals
like you, who want to increase your
leadership skills so that you can bring
out the best in the team that's right
around you. And today we're talking about
intellectual capital. First, I will
contrast this concept with traditional
forms of capital. Then, we'll talk about
some of the interesting aspects of it.
And then we'll finish the video by
talking about some takeaways that you
can apply to your professional life.
Traditional capital is generally a two
sided equation where we have on one side
money and the other side workers. We
have the capitalists on one side that
have cash, that own property like
factories and the building and the land
other kinds of property, tangible goods.
And on the other side of the equation we
have human capital, or, in other words,
muscle work. You often see this in an
old-fashioned factory where you have the
owners and the workers. Nowadays, we live
in a new economy as they say the
information age. And that old equation has
really been destabilized in a lot of
ways because now people are talking
about intellectual capital, social
capital, cultural capital because these
terms capture very important aspects of
our experience that the old terms don't
really address very well. In fact, I have
a whole nother video about social
capital and I will put a link to that
video in the description below this one
as well as hopefully a pop out card that
should come out right around now.
Let's turn now to intellectual capital
and we'll define this a little bit and
unpack some of the nuances of it.
Intellectual capital is a term that
describes when we see knowledge as a
resource, knowledge that is used to solve
problems often an industry, knowledge
that adds value to an enterprise in some
way, that gives an enterprise a strategic
advantage.
If your knowledge and
expertise solves those kinds of problems,
then people will see it as an
intellectual capital, essentially your
knowledge will gain currency. A lot of
times we see higher education generally
associated with people who we think of
as having intellectual capital like
doctors and lawyers and engineers and
other people with a higher level of
education. But that's because it's taken
them so long to learn all of this
expertise to solve those problems very
quickly that they have those degrees. It
doesn't necessarily have to go that way
but you usually do see people talking
about intellectual capital in terms of
those higher levels of education. It's
important to note though that your
information, knowledge, expertise, any data
that you might have, is not automatically
valuable. There's this issue, when we're
talking about intellectual capital, of
perception. In other words, let's say that
you are the world's foremost expert on
the common housefly. Let me ask you this.
Why is your top-level expertise on the
housefly valuable? Why should I be
willing to pay you for that knowledge
and information? Because I'm sure that
there are experts out there in all kinds
of fields that know what they know and
feel passionate about it but why should
I care? What problem does your expertise
solve that I can't solve on my own?
That's when your expertise, when your
knowledge becomes intellectual
capital. When your knowledge gains
currency, now we're talking about
intellectual capital. Why is some
knowledge and expertise more valuable in
people's perceptions than others? Wel,l
there are three ways--at least three ways--
that we see some knowledge is [seen as] more
valuable than others, the processes or
ways that we start to think, Oh, that's
really important, or, we don't care as
much about other types of expertise.
Let's unpack these three. The first one
is the tradition of the contexts.
Let's say you come from a certain
country or region or industry or a
certain time a place in history, there's
a momentum over time that has positioned
certain types of jobs and certain
types of knowledge and expertise as more
valuable than others. In the United
States, we think physicians are really
top notch. If you're a doctor, then wow.
That's high status. That's a high paying
job that's really valuable. If we were to
go to India, however, so I'm told. I'm
an American but I'm told in India that
if you're an engineer ,engineers are seen
as having higher status than physicians.
In the United States, that's not the case.
It's reversed. We would say that a
physician has higher status than an
engineer. And this this shows that--
neither one of them is right or wrong by
the way--it's just that the the tradition
of that context positions one type of
expertise above another. So perception
matters. A second way that some
expertise is positioned or valued more
than others is the importance of the
problem that that expertise solves.
I am a big fan of science fiction movies,
especially alien invasions and wars and
things like that. I'm a big fan of Marvel.
And here's what I've noticed in a lot of
these movies, like especially the alien
invasion science fiction movies.
Early on in the movie, there's some expert that
everybody ignores. They say, Oh what do
you know? And then what happens is the
aliens actually invade and the science
fiction weapons come out and all of a
sudden this expert that everybody blew
off a little while ago now becomes the
most important guy because he's the only
one that knows how to defeat the aliens.
He knows something, some
information, some expertise that now is
really important. The type of expertise
you have will be seen as valuable if it
solves an important problem in that
context. And, of course, contexts change
over time. So, different knowledge becomes
more important or less important over
time. And the third way that our
knowledge becomes seen as high-level
intellectual capital or not is the
active perception management by the
people in that context. People get
better at explaining why what they know
is valuable or they do
something to position it as more
valuable. A dermatologist is a kind of
doctor that works on the skin, plainly
put. Years ago, a few decades back,
dermatologists were not really seen as
having high status in the medical
community. It was a common type of
position. There were lots of
dermatologists. And what happened was the
dermatologists all got together and they
decided very deliberately to limit the
number of positions for incoming, new
dermatologists. So what they did is they
manipulated the supply and demand of
how many new dermatologists
were getting into the system. And then in
the future, now there are very few
dermatologists compared to the need. so
they messed with the supply and demand
equation. And nowadays dermatologists are
very highly paid well deep into the six
figures, as highly paid as some surgeons
and heart surgeons but they weren't
before. Here's the question. Did their
expertise become more valuable naturally
or did they manage the perception of
their expertise?
They managed a perception. They changed the supply and
demand equation and they now are some of
the most prestigious and high status
positions available in the medical
community. So the importance here is
realizing that unlike cash, unlike
traditional capital, intellectual capital
is subject to perception. I don't see
this a lot in the books about
intellectual capital out there. I wrote
an article about this about ten years
ago in a Western Journal of Communication about how
intellectual capital was really more
subject to perception than other forms
of capital and so it's a topic that's
really important to me.
Let's talk about some takeaways for you in your
professional life and how you can use
this concept to think about your own
your own expertise. the first is that
times have changed and now more than
ever you can get your information your
knowledge your expertise directly to
clients. we live in the information age
and everything you know can reach the
world with the touch of a button. All you
really not need
is a laptop and a phone and you can
essentially sell your expertise to a
global audience. You don't need a factory
anymore. You don't need a big rich
capitalist to get behind you. You don't
need a whole lot of equipment. Times
have change and nowadays your expertise
is more valuable than ever.
Another takeaway is education
becomes very important in this equation.
It's one of the fastest and most
reliable ways to develop an expertise.
If you haven't already thought about it,
you might consider thinking about a
master's level degree or above to invest
in your expertise.
And a third takeaway
is that you have to get good at
explaining what you do. Your expertise is
not going to sell itself any more than
the foremost expert on houseflies. That
expertise doesn't sell itself. You have
to get good at explaining what you know
to other people because if you can
explain how your knowledge helps solve
an important problem, you're much more
likely to get a good and favorable
economic exchange. And one last tip on
this, and this is more of a caution, be
careful because if you work for a big
company, big companies have a reputation
for trying to take your expertise and
take your knowledge and make it their
property instead of yours. Just like
in the old days in the old factories how
they tried to deskill their workers and
have each worker just do one little
piece of the assembly line process, big
companies nowadays are trying to capture
your knowledge in some way, capture your
expertise in some way. And that changes
the power dynamic. That changes the
relationship between the big company and
the employee and you don't want to go
back in time and go back to the way it
was in the old factory. As someone with
expertise, with lots of good knowledge and
information, you want to stay in the
driver's seat and hold on to that
expertise in a way that you get a fair
exchange. Now, that's complicated. there's
lots more nuance to that last item but
just keep that in mind. Question of
the day. What aspect of this video did
you find most interesting about
intellectual capital? I would love to
hear your comments in that section below
the video.
And I want to leave by offering you a
free resource I've created, a
downloadable free PDF with the seven
instant tips to make you more confident
and composed public speaker. I will link
that in the description below the video
as well as the first comment in that
comment section of the video. So you
click on that link, you put in your email
and then I email you those seven instant
tips to becoming more confident and
composed public speaker. So thanks. God
bless and I will see you in the next video.