What really creates the full value of a business and the role of intangible assets
Financial statements tell an important story, but not the whole one. They show what a company owns, owes, and earns, yet they reveal little about what actually makes a business valuable. The real drivers of performance often live outside the numbers: in intangible assets like people, culture, knowledge, relationships, and trust.
Nearly 90% of S&P 500 market value now comes from intangible assets (source: Ocean Tomo, 2024), underscoring their growing importance in performance and valuation. Organizations today have never been better at measuring the tangible. We can track revenue, productivity, and cost efficiency in real time. But the challenge lies in understanding and nurturing the intangibles, the human, relational, and knowledge-based forces that make those results possible.
The two sides of business value
Research from McKinsey shows that companies scoring in the top quartile for organizational health and culture deliver three times higher total shareholder returns than those in the bottom quartile (source: McKinsey & Company, 2024). This reinforces how intangible strengths such as leadership trust, collaboration, and employee engagement directly influence financial performance.
A company’s value is the sum of its tangible and intangible assets:
- Tangible assets: equipment, property, cash, and inventory, visible and replaceable.
- Intangible assets: culture, competence, customer relationships, brand reputation, know-how, intellectual property, and trust, harder to measure, yet they often determine how effectively the tangible side delivers results.
Strong cultures amplify the return on every tangible investment. Loyal customers, trusted brands, and well-trained teams create resilience when markets shift. Teams that share purpose and alignment use resources better, innovate faster, and adapt more easily when conditions change. In this way, the intangible side of value doesn’t sit apart from the tangible, it multiplies it.
When leaders invest in people and processes, strengthen customer trust, and build brand credibility, they’re shaping the assets that make every financial investment work harder.
Consider two companies with identical balance sheets. One struggles with high turnover, eroding trust, and siloed teams. The other invests continuously in people, maintains strong relationships, and operates with cultural alignment. According to research cited by The Josh Bersin Company in their 2025 Talent Density report, companies with high-performance cultures grow 20% faster than average and are 50% more effective at decision-making and execution (originally from Bain & Company's 'Decision Insights' research, 2011). The difference? Intangible assets, trust, culture, and capability.
Business acumen: seeing the whole picture
This article builds on concepts introduced in More than Apples & Oranges, continuing our exploration of practical business acumen and the factors that drive organizational value. In earlier articles, we explored how financial literacy supports decision making. Here, we look at the human side of value creation.
At its heart, business acumen is about understanding how organizations create value, financially, strategically, and culturally. It’s the ability to connect daily actions to overall results, to see how decisions affect both the hard numbers and the softer human systems behind them.
Developing this kind of acumen requires more than reading financial reports. It takes experience, reflection, and dialogue. When people learn by doing, exploring realistic business scenarios, they start to grasp how investments in people, processes, customer relationships, and brand image translate into financial outcomes. They don’t just understand the numbers; they understand what drives them.
In our work with leaders, we see that understanding value creation means balancing both sides,how internal capabilities and external relationships combine to build sustainable performance.
Seeing more, not just measuring more
Technology, including artificial intelligence, is beginning to help leaders make the invisible visible, offering leaders new ways to better understand intangible values like culture and engagement. Studies such as Deloitte’s The Impact of Intangibles (2024) further emphasize how technology and analytics are expanding leaders’ ability to connect intangible drivers to performance. Analytics, sentiment analysis, and skill mapping offer glimpses into areas once left to intuition. They can surface early signals about engagement, learning needs, or shifts in customer sentiment. These tools don’t replace judgment, they support it. They give leaders richer information to interpret, discuss, and act upon.
But the essence of value creation remains human. Data can show where trust is eroding, but only people can rebuild it. Algorithms can flag disengagement, but only leadership and dialogue can re-ignite purpose. The best organizations use technology to enhance awareness, not to outsource understanding.
From understanding to action
Self‑Assessment: Balancing Tangible and Intangible Value
Consider how your organization performs in these areas (rate 1–5):
- Do we continuously invest in people development and learning?
- Do we maintain strong, trusted customer relationships?
- Does our culture reflect collaboration and shared purpose?
- Can we clearly describe how intangible assets connect to financial results?
- Are we actively measuring and acting on both tangible and intangible drivers of business value?
Use this reflection to identify where focus and improvement are most needed.
Recognizing both tangible and intangible value is just the first step. The next is to act on it, to build systems, habits, and learning cultures that reinforce what matters most.
When leaders give people the chance to explore business dynamics together,through simulations, team discussions, or guided experiments, they turn awareness into capability. They create shared understanding of how everyday choices affect value creation. This kind of experiential learning strengthens both financial literacy and cultural alignment, two of the most powerful yet under-measured assets a business can own.
The leadership reflection: connecting business acumen and intangible assets
Ultimately, this ties back to the essence of business acumen, understanding how value is created and sustained across every part of the organization. This article is part of Celemi’s ongoing Business Acumen Series, which explores how individuals and teams can strengthen their understanding of value creation, from financial literacy to strategic alignment and cultural capability.
True business acumen means seeing beyond the balance sheet. It’s understanding that value doesn’t live only in cash or capital, it also lives in the trust between people, the strength of customer relationships, the reputation of the brand, and the curiosity to keep learning.
Financial statements show where you’ve been. Intangibles show where you can go. The organizations that will thrive are those that balance both, the measurable and the meaningful, to see and shape the full picture of value.
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