Intellectual Capital/Stewart 153-155

155 As information and the economic power it conveys move downstream, it is vital that businesses manage customer relationships in new ways. They must invest in their customers, just as they do in their people and structures. Customer capital is a lot like human capital: you cannot own customer, any more than you can own people. But just as individuals but also to create knowledge assets for the company as a whole, so a company and its customers can grow intellectual capital that is their joint and several property. Make no mistake: These are real investments made in the expectation of a return. If you make them wisely, they entitle you to one, just as the right investment in human capital produce value that belongs to shareholders as well as employees. There's a world of investment opportunity.