The case for turning institutional knowledge into lasting business assets

The essay contrasts businesses that accumulate assets such as code or production plants with professional services partnerships that depend largely on their people. It describes expertise traditionally living in partners’ minds and filing cabinets, passed to juniors through years of work and feedback. The author argues that firms can build compounding systems of knowledge capital and, in the accompanying post, predicts that those that succeed will become much more valuable than those that don’t.