Intellectual Capital/Stewart 12-16

14…you’re paying for his brainpower.

16 Brian Arthur, an economist who divides his time between Stanford University and the Santa Fe Institute, summarizes the shift this way: In the old economy, people bought and sold “congealed resources”—a lot of material held together by a little bit of knowledge. (Think of an ingot of aluminum, for example made of bauxite and huge amounts of electricity according to a 100-year-old smelting process.) In the new economy, we buy and sell “congealed knowledge”—a lot of intellectual content in a physical slipcase. (Think of a piece of computer software, or a new aircraft, most of whose cost is R&D.)