The search for quality by Phaedrus, the book's leading character, is exactly the kind of effort knowledge companies are expected to make in the near future. After all, the entire idea was centred around measuring quality, something intangible.

As Pirsig puts it, quality or its absence, doesn't reside in either the subject or the object. "At the moment of pure quality, there is no subject or object. There is only a sense of quality that produces a later awareness of subjects and objects."

If one looks at the card of an employee from Infosys, the message is very clear: "Powered by technology. Driven by values". It is only through the sense of these values that led Phaedrus to grapple with the puzzle of quality. It is through these values that Infosys has managed to put some kind of number on its knowledge assets. Infosys is the first Indian company to put a value on its human assets and its brand and discloses these values as additional information to its shareholders.

The initiative of the company to make the balance sheet of the millennium is probably taking the Indian corporate world in a new direction. More and more Indian companies are restructuring themselves and at the same time unlocking and realising the real worth of their assets.

As the debate to measure intellectual capital hots up, many knowledge scientists are coming out with newer models. The basic concepts behind these models remain the same and will always be a function of discounted cash flows. But formalising these aspects for accounting purposes is a very difficult job.

Lev Baruch has come out with an interesting formula. This formula could be standardised by accountants all over the world. They could then come out with an acceptable format for knowledge valuation for firms.

Brands are one of the very few intangible assets that can be measured. This is possible by looking into the future and arriving at present values. If acquired brands are shown in the balance sheet, then why not all types of intangible assets?