These slides were from a talk I gave to a group of consultants who went to Harvard Business School at their monthly meeting. The theme was "thought leading." It was fun for me to trace the story of how my interest in IC developed and morphed over time into what we are now doing at Smarter Companies.

1. A Learning Journey
Mary Adams
Smarter-Companies Inc.

2. 1984-99
High risk lending was
a great introduction
to strategy,
management and
finance

3. 1999 
2004 
trekking

4. 2004  09
Lots of
articles

5. Trek’s work
with private
companies
led to a role
in launching
a new
memberbased
organization
…

6. We also became aware of intangible
capital
Intangibles information gap
Intangible book value
Tangible book value
Source: Ocean Tomo
Smarter-Companies Inc.

7. Began a parallel trek…
• Started a website called IC Knowledge Center
• Added three new references a month (link to an
article, book)
• Sent out a newsletter saying “here’s what’s new at the
ICKC”
• Later morphed into a blog
• In 2010, became a community
• Also created a personal blog…

8. Once we wrote this
article, we knew it had
to be a book—even
before it won an
award:)

9. Article was
the outline for
the book…

10. Book
became a
product…

11. Product and
community
became a
company…

12. We train
ICountants to
use our
products …

13. Today
• Smarter-Companies was launched in January, 2013
• We have 550+ members
• We have licensees on five continents
• We’ve trained 20 ICountants
• We’re creating a movement for Measures that Matter

14. …and it all started with a
little article