The Sveiby Toolkit: Web tools for intangible asset management

Last year, I had the opportunity to participate in a seminar led by Karl Erik Sveiby (perhaps best known as the author of The New Organizational Wealth: Managing and Measuring Knowledge-Based Assets, and the originator of the Tango simulation game). Afterward, I asked him if he planned to create any online tools to support his techniques for assessing intangible assets. He told me--in confidence--that he had something in the works, and that he hoped it would be available in the spring or summer.

A few weeks ago, I followed up with Karl Erik--largely because I hadn't heard word one about the online service from him--and discovered that the long-awaited toolkit had just been launched Sveiby Toolkit. He has partnered with KnowInc, (headed by Hubert St. Onge) to produce the toolkit and manage subscriptions. Yes, access to the toolkit is by subscription, but the price of $200/quarter is small enough that even the solo practitioner can afford it.

What's in the Toolkit?

Because of the popularity of the Celemi business simulation tools (Tango, and Apples & Oranges Knowledge), I had assumed that these would figure prominently on the Web site. Alas, these have not been implemented as software, and we will have to wait for a subsequent release for these to be available in software form.

The toolkit is a suite of tools, related more by the underlying methods and philosophy of Karl Erik than any sort of software integration--this is not the SAP of knowledge management, but more of a consultant's bag of tricks (meant in the nicest sense, of course).

Recommended as the starting point for using the toolkit, you will find a knowledge management "course," a 30-screen presentation of the basic principles of Sveiby-think. Even those as jaded and world-weary as I am will still find the exposition of these ideas fresh and compelling. However, this course seems clearly geared to the KM novice, unlike many of the other tools.

The "KM Casebase" is a database of thumbnail reviews of various knowledge management projects, analyzed from the perspective of the Sveiby method. My sense is that this could prove useful for two audiences: for those looking for best practices to emulate, or those seeking examples to justify investment in knowledge management initiatives. Many of these thumbnails are drawn from publicly available information--I noted examples from Harvard Business Review and Knowledge Inc., to mention only two.

The "Invisible Balance Sheet" is a toy calculator tool, which at a very simplistic level estimates the value of the intangible assets within a business. Perhaps this is suitable as a demonstration tool, but its actual utility is limited to illustrative purposes. Associated with this toollette are various PowerPoint slideshows geared to help gaining support for knowledge management. Karl Erik himself notes, "If all the energy we have to spend on selling internally were used in productive work, sigh...!"

The "Kmap" tool is obviously geared to helping a consultant in a knowledge management project. In essence, the tool is an interactive and directed means to determine which issues (and sub-issues) are relevant to a specific initiative, and to identify a barrage of projects (perhaps hundreds) in support of company-wide knowledge management goals. This is the most tool-like tool in the kit, with a project management feel, and it's clearly geared to consultants managing many knowledge management initiatives with different companies.

The "Intangible Assets Monitor" is an Excel worksheet that represents what appears to be the sanitized intangible asset information relating to a real company. In principle, you could take the spreadsheet, plug in some new data, and use it as a means to monitor your company's progress against various knowledge goals. However, the explanation of how the worksheet's various pages are cross-linked is sketchy at best, and so the process of converting it for your own use would be daunting, although not impossible. This is no "BizPlan Builder" spreadsheet system, with careful descriptions on how to enter information, critical formulas in locked cells and so on.

Bottom Line

The audience for the toolkit falls into two camps: those seeking management approval for knowledge management initiatives and consultants (perhaps internal) actually managing knowledge management projects. This probably matches up pretty well with the general population interested in knowledge management tools, so those in both groups will find the toolkit useful.

My sense is that the toolkit lacks an integrative framework, such as might be supported by a collaborative project management framework--as implied by the project worksheet output of the Kmap tool--and I hope that such a foundation can be retrofitted into subsequent releases, along with a web-based version of Tango.

As a consultant, I would certainly be most likely to use the Kmap tool and the KM Casebase, and my hunch is that after the first few exposures to the toolkit, that is where the action will be. The benefits of access to these tools will certainly offset the costs, at least for serious knowledge management practitioners.

Stowe Boyd heads the advisory services group Running Light, and edits the e-zine Message from Edge City and the quarterly "Update." His e-mail address is stoweboyd@runninglight.com.