A company today is made up of six kinds of capital. There’s the financial capital, the structural capital and the intellectual capital, all of which we understand pretty well. Yet I don’t believe those things by themselves create wealth. Those are actually almost inanimate. And it’s a complete mistake to say that knowledge is the most critical resource in the New Economy. Knowledge today is a commodity. You can buy it by the yard from just about anywhere.
It seems to me there’s three different kinds of capital that animate the traditional sources of capital, that serve as the catalyst that translate the traditional sources of capital into wealth. Those new sources of capital are imagination capital, the ability that people have to imagine entirely new uses for their traditional capital; entrepreneurial capital, the courage and the guts of people to actually experiment and try new things; and relationship capital, the connections that people in the organization have with each other, and with organizations and individuals outside of the company.
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