Book excerpt: In the knowledge economy, the value of corporations is directly related to their knowledge and intellectual capital. But broaden the perspective a little wider and you begin to see the possibilities: Think of cities, regions, even entire nations, in addition to the public sector. If intangibles and intellectual capital are important to the private sector, they are also important to the productivity and competitiveness of the public sector, and so to communities and nations as a whole. In this book, Editors Ahmed Bounfour and Leif Edivinsson have brought together the best minds in intellectual capital throughout the world to focus on a new and fertile area of research: measuring and managing the intellectual capital of communities. This is a creative and cutting-edge area of research that has the potential to change how public sector planning and development is done. Once there is a clear way to identify where wealth is created in a given region/nation, this process has the potential to reveal a huge knowledge repository in the public sector with a significant—but idle—potential for collective wealth creation—the wealth of nations in waiting.