Reflections on the ESCoE Conference on Intangible Assets

In November 2021, some of the world's foremost researchers on intangible assets gathered at RSA House in London for a landmark two-day conference jointly organised by the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE) and the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth (IARIW). For most attendees, it was the first in-person academic gathering in almost two years — and the irony of discussing intangible, weightless assets in a very tangible, physical setting was not lost on anyone in the room.

The conference brought together a remarkable concentration of expertise. The researchers who had shaped how we understand and measure intangible assets over the past two decades were presenting alongside a new generation pushing the boundaries of what can be captured, valued, and tracked.

The Keynotes: Sichel and Haskel

The opening keynote came from Dan Sichel (Wellesley College), one of the three architects of the Corrado-Hulten-Sichel (CHS) framework that has defined how economists measure intangible investment since 2005. His presentation, "Intangibles: How Far We Have Come and the Road Ahead," took the audience through the history of intangibles research — from the early recognition that something important was missing from national accounts, through the development of the CHS categories, to the substantial body of work that has followed. His message was clear: despite fifteen years of intense research, many fundamental questions remain unanswered. The framework that brought us this far may itself need revisiting.

The closing keynote was delivered by Jonathan Haskel CBE, Professor at Imperial College Business School and external member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee. His presentation, "Intangibles: Productivity and Policy," examined the role of intangible assets in explaining some of the most pressing economic phenomena of our time — including the productivity growth slowdown that has puzzled economists for over a decade.

Haskel's work, particularly Capitalism Without Capital (co-authored with Stian Westlake in 2018), has been instrumental in bringing the intangibles discussion from academic journals into the policy mainstream. His keynote reinforced a point that resonates deeply with our work at Opagio: that the mismatch between how economies actually create value and how statistical systems measure that value is not merely an academic curiosity — it has real consequences for productivity policy, business investment, and economic growth.

The Research Programme

Between the two keynotes, the conference featured an extraordinary breadth of contributions. Researchers presented work on the continuing importance of intangible assets for aggregate and firm-level productivity growth. Several papers demonstrated that variations in intangible investment help explain differences in performance at both the bottom and top of the productivity distribution.

Diane Coyle (University of Cambridge) presented on the creation and governance of social value from data — an increasingly important category of intangible asset that challenges existing frameworks. Her work highlighted that conventional cost-based valuation approaches may be fundamentally inadequate for data assets, and that alternative methods including market-based, option-value, and willingness-to-pay approaches deserve serious attention.

Carol Robbins (National Science Foundation) presented on open-source software investment — a category of intangible investment that creates enormous economic value but is largely invisible to existing measurement systems.

Hannu Piekkola (University of Vaasa) presented detailed work on intangible asset measurement across European economies, while several papers explored the specific challenges of measuring organisational capital, branding investments, and the relationship between data assets and business model innovation.

A prevailing theme emerged: the need for better definitions, better classifications, and more innovative approaches to data collection. The difficulties of measuring intangible investments through traditional survey methods — documented over many years by ONS and researchers including Josh Martin (Head of Productivity at ONS and ESCoE Topic Lead) — suggested that fundamentally different approaches might be needed.

Conference Programme Highlights

The two-day programme brought together leading voices from across the intangible assets research community.

Keynote Speakers

Selected Presentations

David Stroll's paper was discussed by Josh Martin (ONS), whose own research on the challenges of intangible data collection through business surveys provided valuable context for the firm-level approach.

David Stroll's Presentation: Collecting Firm-Level Data

It was in this context that David Stroll, Opagio's Chief Scientist, presented his paper "Collecting Firm Level Data for Intangible Assets: Two SME Case Studies." The paper addressed a gap that several other presenters had identified: the disconnect between macro-level intangible investment statistics and the reality of how individual firms actually create, invest in, and benefit from their intangible assets.

David's central argument was direct: if we accept that intangible assets are the primary drivers of economic growth, then we need to measure them where they are actually created and managed — inside the firm. The aggregate statistics that economists rely on, while valuable for national accounts, cannot capture the granularity that business leaders and investors need to make decisions.

The paper presented a methodology for collecting intangible asset data directly from firms using a purpose-built SaaS application — the early prototype of what would eventually become the Opagio Growth Platform. The data painted a striking picture. UK intangible investment had doubled since the start of the digital era, with intangibles rising from 47% to 53% of total investment. Yet roughly 62% of intangible assets remained uncapitalised — invisible on balance sheets and inaccessible as collateral for growth funding. David's projections showed that if firms could progressively capitalise even a portion of these hidden assets, it would unlock billions in additional investment capacity for high-growth businesses.

The audience responded positively to the empirical approach — particularly Josh Martin, whose conference presentation was memorably titled "The F Words: Why Surveying Businesses About Intangibles is So Hard" (the four F words being Forgotten, Framing, Fuzzy, and Frequency). Josh's own experience of the difficulties of traditional survey methods made him an ideal discussant for a paper proposing an alternative, technology-enabled approach. His reflections on the conference provide additional context.

Why This Matters for Opagio

The ESCoE conference confirmed something we had suspected but needed academic validation to assert confidently: existing frameworks for measuring intangible assets, while essential for national accounts and regulatory reporting, are insufficient for practitioners. The CHS framework classifies intangible investment into three broad categories. IFRS 3 recognises only those intangible assets that meet strict separability and contractual criteria. Neither provides the granularity that a CFO, M&A advisor, or investor needs to understand where value actually resides in a business.

This insight — validated by the research community at the ESCoE conference — directly informed the development of The Opagio 12 Value Drivers framework, which extends beyond existing classifications to capture asset categories that matter for enterprise valuation but are invisible to traditional accounting: network effects, switching costs, data moats, organisational culture, and ecosystem value.

The conference also reinforced the urgency of the problem. As multiple presenters noted, intangible assets now represent the majority of enterprise value in developed economies. The inability to measure and report on these assets has consequences that cascade through the entire economy — from individual firms that cannot secure growth funding against intangible collateral, to national statistics that systematically undercount the true level of business investment.

The Wider Context

The ESCoE conference sat within a broader research programme that has shaped our thinking at Opagio. David Stroll's earlier involvement with Big Innovation Centre's "Intangible Gold" initiative (2017) — which reviewed existing approaches to intangible asset data collection across accounting standards, the CHS framework, and the Six Capitals model — provided foundational analysis that informed the conference paper and ultimately the Opagio platform design.

The conference proceedings, along with recordings of both keynote addresses, are available through the ESCoE website.

Looking Forward

In the years since the conference, the intangibles research community has continued to advance. The questions raised at RSA House in November 2021 — about better classification systems, firm-level data collection, the valuation of data assets, and the treatment of organisational capital — remain active areas of research.

At Opagio, we have taken these academic insights and built them into a practical platform that enables businesses and their investors to identify, classify, and value their intangible assets. The Opagio 12 Value Drivers framework, our 8,695-example asset taxonomy, and our classification engine all trace their intellectual lineage to the research programme that the ESCoE conference represents.

Related Articles

• The UK Productivity Puzzle — Why Britain's productivity growth stalled and what intangible assets have to do with it
• The Marshall Plan: How the UK Fell Behind — The historical roots of the UK's productivity gap
• How the US Productivity Program Won WW2 — The original productivity revolution and its lessons for today

David Stroll is Chief Scientist at Opagio and a PhD candidate at Birkbeck College, University of London. His research focuses on firm-level measurement of intangible assets and productivity. The ESCoE/IARIW Conference on Intangible Assets was held at RSA House, London, on 11-12 November 2021.

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