The Dow Jones Industrial Average. Coca-Cola (CCLAY)'s logos. The ABA routing number on the bottom of your checks. The URL for Amazon.com (AMZN).

What do all of these have in common? They are all information assets - valuable property that is the by-product of the central activity performed by the organization that owns them. Understanding how these information assets work is essential to your e-business strategy.

Charles Dow created the DJIA in 1896. Over time it has become iconic, a daily fixation for millions. The growing value of the DJIA as an information asset has led to the creation of related products. Since 1997, for example, Dow Jones has licensed the index to companies that use it to create financial instruments, including futures, options and other derivatives.

Similarly, Coca-Cola, like other companies with well-known brands, licenses its logos for use in completely unrelated products like clothing and toys. One sign of what such trademarks are worth is the amount of money companies spend to litigate at the first indication that someone is using them without permission.

But what is the value of the DJIA or Coke's logos? According to those companies' financial statements, nothing.

Information assets - including brands, intellectual property, customer relationships, expertise and other human capital - appear nowhere on the balance sheet. As Time Warner (dossier)'s 1999 annual report deftly puts it, generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) "do not recognize the value of such assets." And all public companies must follow GAAP.

Accountants argue that they cannot value these "intangibles" because there is no accepted method for calculating their value. That's because the accounting profession hasn't bothered to develop any.

This long-standing problem for information-heavy companies is about to become everyone's headache, as information assets increasingly become the drivers of value in the new economy. Already, a strong case can be made that the wide divergence between valuation models for old and new economy companies is in large part a function of the market's recognition that valuable information assets don't show up in traditional valuation models. And new economy companies have an abundance of such assets.

As you implement an e-business strategy, you will too.

Is That Your Final Answer?
Every company has valuable information, of course, but the companies that lose the most from the invisibility of these assets are those that create and own large stocks of intellectual and human capital. Entertainment companies, such as Time Warner and Disney, are prime examples. Their real value appears - like magic - only when the company is sold.