Approaching the Future 2026 includes, for the first time, a specific snapshot of the incorporation of intangible assets and resources into organisations’ measurement and management systems. The results show a landscape in transition: organisations are making progress in measurement, but are still far from fully integrating intangibles into their decision-making and incentive systems. The main challenge is not only to measure, but to turn those metrics into criteria that influence decision-making, accountability and the remuneration of executive teams and all employees.

Customer satisfaction is one of the most established intangible indicators in dashboards, followed by corporate reputation. However, its link to compensation mechanisms remains limited. In the case of reputation, although 61% of Spanish organisations and 68.6% of Latin American organisations include it in their dashboards, only 24% and 22.8%, respectively, link it to compensation mechanisms.

This figure highlights a central paradox: intangibles are recognised as strategic, but they are not always consistently reflected in the systems that shape management decisions and behaviour. When reputation, brand, purpose, internal engagement or ESG metrics are not present in the dashboard and carry no weight in incentives, their management will tend to be more reactive, fragmented and subordinated to other priorities.

The report also shows that corporate communication is the function most frequently identified as responsible for managing intangibles in Spain and Latin America.

However, this leading role does not in itself guarantee the cross-functional coordination these assets require. True maturity will come when responsibility is coordinated among all the areas that contribute to building them — communication, strategy, sustainability, talent, brand, corporate affairs and general management — and when each of them has indicators that are integrated into the executive dashboard, and these KPIs are considered indispensable for strategic and business decision-making. In addition, the fact that 10% of Spanish organisations and 7.8% of Latin American organisations acknowledge not having a clear function to manage intangibles reveals a significant organisational risk.

The next frontier in intangible management will not be to measure more, but to measure better and with purpose. The challenge will be to express the contribution of reputation, brand, purpose, sustainability, communication and talent in strategic and financial terms, formally incorporate them into dashboards and connect them with incentive schemes that align organisational behaviour with long-term value creation.

The next frontier: metrics, dashboards and the evolving management function