In recent years, accountants have begun to recognize that financial statements prepared under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) cannot adequately communicate the value of companies that use internally generated intangible assets--such as software or pharmaceutical designs--to produce their revenues and profits. Since 80 percent of the value of the Standard & Poor’s 500 companies may be attributable to intangible assets, this is a serious problem for our current system of financial disclosure.

Accounting theorists and the major accounting firms have been working for years to develop ways of supplementing GAAP financial statements in order to give investors a more complete picture of company values. One promising method is the use of nonfinancial indicators, also known as business performance measures. These are numerical measures that indicate whether companies are meeting their stated goals or otherwise adding value for their shareholders. At this conference, experts on nonfinancial indicators and business performance measures will discuss the state of the art in this area, and how the development and use of these indicators can be advanced in the future.