Andrew Watson

Co-founder @Rethinking Capital

London, GB

Rethinking Capital’s mission is to take the net zero, nature and sustainability applications of Accounting for Reality (normative accounting for intangibles) to market—at scale, rapidly and for the common good. Rethinking Capital began with a serendipitous introduction to Robert McGarvey and Joe Batty. We decided to bring together our two bodies of IP and to begin an open community of experts in managing and measuring Intangible Assets.I brought and further developed the first standard taxonomy of Intangible Assets and a system design to demonstrate the interactions and flows between them.We then created the first method to capitalise all Intangible Assets to create the concept and practice of a Parallel Balance Sheet applying current accounting principles and International Accounting Standards. Our co-creation continued to inspire many new innovations and breakthroughs, leading in 2020 to normative economics, normative accounting, normative governance, a new team joining us and a collaboration with the IWAI at Harvard. We know now that we’ve cracked the intangibles problem. Fortunately a growing group of believers also realises it. The challenge now is to prove it and take our work to adoption. If we do our work well in 2021, the outcome will be profound. And then I can rest.