It is difficult to go any length of time and not hear a company president or CEO use this well-worn expression: “People are our greatest assets.”
Baruch Lev, director of the Intangibles Research Project at New York University Stern School of Business, has stated that “people are the most important asset of most companies.” The idea of employees as assets is so embedded in workplace culture that we have not stopped to ask the question: Are people assets? Are we limiting our approaches to talent development because we view talent as an asset?
