Balanced Scorecard Success: The Kaplan-Norton Collection (4 Books)

C H A P T E R    T W O

STRATEGY MAPS

STRATEGY DESCRIBES how an organization intends to create sustained value for its shareholders.¹ In Chapter 1, we documented how organizations today must leverage their intangible assets for sustainable value creation. Creating value from intangible assets differs in several important ways from creating value by managing tangible physical and financial assets:

1. Value creation is indirect. Intangible assets such as knowledge and technology seldom have a direct impact on financial outcomes such as increased revenues, lowered costs, and higher profits. Improvements in intangible assets affect financial outcomes through chains of cause-and-effect relationships. For example, employee training in total quality ...