Quantifying the Intangible

Content

Intangible assets now account for roughly 92% of S&P 500 market value – and data is among the most strategically important yet hardest-to-measure of these resources. This Fraunhofer ISST whitepaper offers a practitioner-oriented framework for understanding, measuring and realising the economic value of enterprise data assets.

Drawing on accounting standards (IAS 38, US GAAP, China's interim provisions on data resources), investor surveys, economics and information systems research, purchase price allocations, AI licensing deals and European data regulation (EU Data Act, European Health Data Space), the authors make a deliberately bounded argument: data is not intrinsically valuable. Value emerges only when data is legally usable, high-quality, fresh, technically accessible, embedded in workflows and combined with complementary organisational capabilities.

The whitepaper compares the established valuation approaches – cost, income (MEEM), market, relief-from-royalty, real options and Data Shapley – and maps each to the specific valuation question it can actually answer. A seven-step decision framework and the "Enterprise Data Valuation Canvas" help executives assess data resources systematically and translate valuation into governance. A 2035 outlook sketches a three-layer architecture of accounting and disclosure, internal management valuation, and transaction-based market pricing.

(Paper only in englisch) 

 

Authors

• Tobias Moritz Guggenberger (Fraunhofer ISST)
• Marcel Altendeitering (Fraunhofer ISST)