Our current health and economic crises only accelerate the vital need for more innovation and faster digital transformation. Senior innovation leaders on the Advisory Board of The Conference Board Innovation & Digital Transformation Institute explore this means in terms of challenges and opportunities across multiple levels.

Trust is an important, but often neglected, intangible asset of the corporation. Trust is a value enhancer for corporate value, and conversely, a lack of trust can destroy market value in an instant.

We need a new conceptual model that incorporates the idea that intangible assets directly connect to business strategy. That way, they can financially impact both revenue growth and shareholder value. After all, a company develops its brand to improve its bottom line because consumers prefer to purchase from companies they know and favor. The same holds true for investors who buy the stock of companies they know and trust.

It is time to rethink brand write downs and for all managers to see their real value. Building intangible capital models for evaluating the accretive value and potential of brands is a logical way to understand whether the investment requested for marketing is worthwhile.

For innovation leaders, mandates for metrics from CEOs and CFOs are nothing new, but how do you measure the competencies that help companies become better innovators, such as creating an innovation culture, or being better prepared to work on diverse teams?

Culture of innovation is a powerful driving force for corporations. The bigger picture, however, is that when the culture of innovation is measured consistently with other descriptive attributes, the results can reliably predict the cash flow multiple. The clear implications are that managers who need to justify and provide accountability for their budgets have a new tool to measure, value, and manage return on investment for intangible assets.

Goodwill on the balance sheet isn’t good enough. Until a better, more transparent accounting, or fair value method replaces goodwill, intangible assets will remain impossible to manage and unaccountable to shareholders. Not providing transparency will have consequences such as significant write-downs ($15 billion write-down for the acquisition of Kraft) of brands and restatements of financial reports.

This year’s C-Suite Challenge painted a clear picture of how corporations’ most senior executives see the future, and what priorities and interventions are required to succeed in it. We have been looking at the insights through an Innovation & Productivity lens to help Innovation leaders best influence the priorities and efforts ahead.