Book excerpt: The fundamental motivation of this book is to contribute to the future advancement of Asset Management in the context of industrial plants and infrastructures. The book aims to foster a future perspective that takes advantage of value-based and intelligent asset management in order to make a step forward with respect to the evolution observed nowadays. Indeed, the current understanding of asset management is primarily supported by well-known standards. Nonetheless, asset management is still a young discipline and the knowledge developed by industry and academia is not set in stone yet. Furthermore, current trends in new organizational concepts and technologies lead to an evolutionary path in the field. Therefore, this book aims to discuss this evolutionary path, starting first of all from the consolidated theory, then moving forward to discuss: • The strategic understanding of value-based asset management in a company; • An operational definition of value, as a concept on the background of value-based asset management; • The identification of intelligent asset management, with the aim to frame a set of “tools” recommended to support the asset-related decision-making process over the asset lifecycle; • The emergence of new technologies such as cyber physical systems and digital twins, and the implications of this on asset management.