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Case Study

Skandia Assurance and Financial Services: Measuring and visualizing intellectual capital

By Donald A. Marchand, Johan Roos and David Oliver

23 pages

May 1996

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Reference: IMD-3-0624

The case details the effort of the financial services arm of a Swedish insurance company to measure its “intellectual capital”. Comparing corporate value to an iceberg, Skandia AFS began in 1991 looking at ways to measure its hidden or non-financial value lying “under the surface”. The firm began developing “intellectual capital indicators”, which it published in the form of supplements to its annual report, and created the new positions of Director of Intellectual Capital and Intellectual Capital Controller to foster the measurement effort. Skandia AFS’s intellectual capital model, called the “Business Navigator”, subdivides intellectual capital into process capital, human capital, customer capital and renewal & development capital. The case also looks at how Skandia AFS has begun to integrate the Business Navigator into its budgeting, leadership development and IT systems.

Keywords

Intellectual Capital, Measurement, Balanced Scorecard, Insurance, Financial Services

Settings

Sweden
1995

Type

Field Research

Available Languages

English

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