Corporate Longitude: Discover Your True Position in the Knowledge Economy (Hardcover)

Leif Edvinsson was the first corporate director of intellectual capital at Skandia (a Swedish financial service company) and now he is an associate professor of intellectual capital at Lund University in Sweden. In addition to intellectual capital, Leif Edvinsson has shown his deep interest, and even affection, for the metaphor and analogy of navigation to explain his views. It is no wonder that the main model used to explain intellectual capital at Scandia is named "Skandia Navigator" and The Economist referred to him "a Viking with a Compass."

Corporate Longitude argues that "modern corporations habitually calibrate along one, single measure: financial capital. This is corporate latitude, the world of so-called, tangible assets made up of a pile of assets build upon the famous bottom-line. The trouble is that this measure gives corporations only part of the picture, only half of the co-ordinates required to know their precise location and to map out the route to their renewal. Without another lateral co-ordinate - a measurement for intellectual capital and other vital intangibles - companies are unable to locate their true potential or chart a meaningful course into the future."

Navigation in this book, however, has gone further than just being a metaphor to describe a phenomenon; rather the book is indeed one further step towards exploring the concepts behind the metaphor of navigation, a process that can be considered as analogy of navigation. Although there are sundry other books, papers and articles that have used the metaphor of navigation to describe business cases, the basis and the root of this attention to navigation has rarely been analyzed. Why is the metaphor of navigation so familiar and understandable? Why has it been used so extensively? Corporate Longitude is indeed a major first step in this direction as it uses the analogy of navigation to describe the distinction between corporate latitude and corporate longitude. Based on this hypothesis, in the future we should have more studies based on the analogy of navigation to explore business concepts. Leif Edvinsson (the same "Viking with a Compass" who now referrers to himself as the "Global Knowledge Nomad") humbly indicates "this book does not provide a definitive compass."

This work is well written and thought provoking. The author seems to aim at a popular managerial level, no doubt attempting to disseminate his practical views. One can hope that Professor Edvinsson in a future work makes a bridge between his practical world and the world of the academy.