According to Paul Adams, managing director, Andersen Consulting, IP leaders provide risk and reputation protection for their businesses. Intangible assets now account for nearly all corporate value, yet most companies still manage them as an afterthought. Reframing IP as stewardship of intangible value is the critical shift required for IP leaders to move from legal support to strategic leadership.
By Paul Adams, Andersen Consulting
*The views expressed herein are those of the authors and don’t necessarily represent the views of LOT Network or any of its members.
Today, intangible assets such as data, software, brands, trade secrets and patents make up roughly 90% of corporate value, yet many organizations fail to actively manage those critical assets. At the same time Chief IP Counsel, Heads of IP and IP Managers, who are in many ways the natural owners of the assets are often seen as a technical, mid-level function and sit far from the strategic center—buried in legal administration, consulted only during crises, and rarely present in boardroom conversations.
A major reason for this disconnect is rooted in how IP professionals perceive their own remit. Most IP managers still see themselves as responsible for patents, trademarks, and perhaps trade secrets. They view their mandate as protecting legal rights, running prosecution workflows, defending claims, and keeping the docket in order. But this remit—while essential—only touches a small fraction of the much broader universe of intangible assets that actually drive corporate value and growth.
Until IP professionals expand their focus beyond legal rights to the true asset base of the firm, they will continue to be excluded from strategic leadership.
IP vs. Intangible Assets: The Core Misalignment
There is a clear distinction between intellectual property rights and intangible assets.
IP rights include patents, trademarks, copyrights, and registered designs—legal constructs tied to specific statutory frameworks.
Intangible assets represent a much broader category, defined as “everything valuable inside the business that you can’t drop on your foot”, including:
- Data
- Software
- Designs
- Content
- Regulatory approvals
- Industrial know-how
- Trade secrets
- Brand and reputation
- Relationships
- Network effects and platform dynamics
- Know How
- Genetic Materials
These 12 classes of intangible assets—not just legal rights—are what make companies valuable, defensible, and scalable. Yet most of them are nowhere near the IP department under typical corporate structures.
This narrow definition of the role is one of the main reasons IP leaders remain siloed and under-involved. If you define yourself as someone who “manages patents,” the business will treat you accordingly. If you define yourself as someone who manages and protects the assets that drive 90% of enterprise value, you belong in the boardroom.
The mandate must expand first in the mind of the IP manager before it can expand inside the organization.
Why the C-suite Overlooks Intangibles—and the People Who Manage Them
There are two structural forces that make intangible assets invisible to senior leadership and keep IP leaders out of strategic discussions.
(1) Cognitive bias toward physical things
First, executives notice what they can see—machines, facilities, products, inventories. They find it harder to naturally perceive the value locked in algorithms, datasets, regulatory approvals, and embedded know-how. If the boardroom table disappears, they notice immediately. If critical code is leaked or brand equity erodes, the damage might not become obvious for months.
Invisible assets lead to invisible managers.
(2) Accounting rules that conceal intangible assets
Second, under IAS 38, most intangible assets are either:
- kept off the balance sheet entirely,
- hidden inside goodwill, or
- recorded at cost, which has no correlation to economic value.
If the financial statements show little or nothing about intangible assets, the C-suite has no quantitative foundation for managing them. And the people responsible for those assets appear non-strategic by association.
Until these structural forces change—which they won’t anytime soon—IP leaders must change how they show up.
The First Shift: Reframe the Role From “IP” to “Intangible Assets”
IP professionals must stop defining their work primarily in terms of patents and trademarks. This isn’t a linguistic trick; it’s a perspective shift that aligns IP’s mandate with what executives care about: assets, value, growth, and risk.
Talking about “intangible assets” instead of narrow “IP rights” broadens the strategic aperture and positions the IP function as a steward of the business’s most valuable resources. It’s a first step—but its not sufficient on its own.
The Second Shift: Speak the Language of Finance
Senior leaders do not think in terms of claims, prior art, or prosecution success rates. They think in terms of:
- revenue and margin percentages
- IRR and ROI
- NPV
- capital efficiency
- tax positioning
- time-to-market
If IP leaders cannot articulate how intangible assets drive financial performance, they will remain peripheral. This requires fluency—not mastery—in financial language and reasoning.
The Third Shift: Demonstrate Value and Risk in Concrete Terms
IP leaders gain attention when they are able to tie trade secrets to gross margin, data assets to recurring revenue, brand equity to pricing power, software to operational efficiency, and regulatory approvals to market access.
When intangible assets are framed as economic engines, the C-suite engages. But to do so means IP managers must be able to clearly identify these critical assets (not simply lists of patents and trademarks, but all intangible assets) and link them to operational and financial consequences. Where Value Concentrates, Risk Concentrates.
Because intangible assets now make up almost all enterprise value, this is where almost all enterprise risk lives. Again, it is critical that the IP manager plays a central role in bringing these risks to the attention of the C-Suite and Board. The five dominant risk categories include:
- Leakage of confidential information
- Inability to prove ownership of assets
- Brand and trademark weakness
- Hazardous use of open-source code
- Patent infringement litigation
As is apparent, only two of the five specifically relate to the traditional conception of IP as being about patents and trademarks, pointing again to the need for the IP Manager to broaden their remit.
The Hard Truth: IP Leaders Must Step Up—They Will Not Be Invited
The structural hurdles are real: cognitive bias, accounting limitations, and legacy perceptions of the IP function. But the path to strategic relevance is clear.
- IP managers must broaden their remit.
- They must speak in financial terms.
- They must quantify value and risk.
- They must initiate—not wait for—executive conversations.
The boardroom will not send an invitation. IP leaders must earn their seat by demonstrating that their work is not a legal formality—it is central to the value, resilience, and competitiveness of the company.
The organizations that recognize this—and the IP leaders who act on it—will be the ones that succeed in the intangible economy.
Author: Paul Adams, Managing Director & Global Partner, Andersen Consulting
Paul Adams is a managing director at Andersen Consulting with more than 20 years of experience leading, growing, and advising successful companies. As a globally recognized authority on intangible assets, he has ranked among the top IP strategists worldwide for the past 12 years, a distinction achieved by fewer than five individuals. Paul has delivered over 250 presentations, including international keynotes and TEDx talks. He has been published inThe Financial Times, The Economist, The Straits Times and The Financial Review.