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2. Improve financial performance: Companies' biggest assets today are intangible ones like patents. And that's not true just in technology-intensive industries. The asset base of U.S. manufacturing firms has also shifted dramatically during the past 30 years. In 1998, a survey by the technology transfer firm BTG International reported that 67% of U.S. companies own technology assets that they fail to exploit. The study noted that these companies on average let more than 35% of their patented technologies go to waste simply because the technology have no immediate use in products.

The present day "knowledge boom" was triggered by the economic liberalization of 1991.