Annual BIG Conference Coming Up 13/5/00 Next week sees the annual conference of the Business and Industrial Interest Group of the MRS and MrWeb will be bringing you live coverage. The aims of the Conference this year are twofold, firstly, to celebrate the knowledge wealth that business researchers have amassed over the years and secondly, to demonstrate how intellectual capital can be used to provide commercial solutions to clients. Corporate directors frequently do not understand the importance of intellectual capital. Commercial opportunities can thus be lost because intangible assets such as knowledge are not recognised. Successful companies that have set up systems to identify where value is added, lost or simply not recognised have proved that they can actively manage, exploit and control their knowledge assets to enhance business success. The challenge for the business research community is to recognise and act on the value of these measures. The speakers and workshop leaders in the conference programme have been selected to illustrate how new ways of thinking, innovative research techniques and e-business achievements can increase commercial success by exploiting intellectual capital. Two key speakers include: Professor Charles Oppenheim, a specialist adviser to the House of Lords' enquiry into the Superhighway and professor of Information Science at Loughborough University, who will address the issue of information assets, their identification, measurement and management in UK companies; and Paul Brigham, marketing and strategic planning director at ICI Paints, whose talk will cover the changing needs of the client in the twenty first century. For more information visit BIG's Web site.