Something shifted, but most organizations haven’t caught up yet.

For much of the last century, economic value was measured in tangible assets: factories, equipment, and inventory. Today, more than 90% of S&P 500 value comes from intangibles—knowledge, innovation, relationships, and intellectual property.

We are now operating in what the OECD describes as a brain economy, where cognitive, emotional, and social capabilities determine economic value. And the McKinsey Health Institute has put a number on the opportunity: $26 trillion tied to brain health and human capability.

Yet many organizations are struggling to capture it—not because they lack expertise, but because insight isn’t reliably translating into decisions and execution.

At the 2025 World Economic Forum in Davos, brain health emerged as a global priority. By 2026, that conversation had expanded. Brain health and brain skills were no longer discussed as wellness or talent initiatives alone, but as economic infrastructure, recognizing them as foundational to resilience, leadership readiness, and performance in the age of AI.

Welcome to the brain economy.

For many organizations, the constraint isn’t knowledge. It’s conversion.

What Is the Brain Economy?

By 2026, global policy and business leaders increasingly began treating brain capital—the integration of brain health and brain skills—not as a peripheral concern, but as economic infrastructure that enables innovation, adaptability, and sound decision-making in complex systems.

Brain capital combines the mental and neurological capacity that supports sustained performance with skills such as analytical thinking, resilience, adaptability, and social influence. When this infrastructure is strained or poorly integrated, value creation slows.

Where Value Quietly Leaks

Modern organizations spend most of their time trying to move thinking forward.

Research shows that professionals spend nearly 88% of the typical workweek communicating—in emails, meetings, presentations, reports, messages, and collaborative platforms. Nearly 19 hours per week are spent on writing alone. In other words, roughly nine out of every ten working hours involve communication in some form .

That reality changes the stakes.

In the brain economy, communication isn’t a soft skill. It’s the primary mechanism through which brain capital becomes visible and actionable.

By 2026, a clearer pattern had emerged: organizations aren’t struggling to generate insight. They’re struggling to convert insight into shared understanding, aligned decisions, and sustained action—especially in high-stakes environments.

What This Means for Careers—and Organizations

The old paradigm rewarded credentials, depth of expertise, and technical excellence. The current reality is more demanding.

Technical expertise is now table stakes. What differentiates leaders—and organizations—is whether that expertise holds under pressure and influences decisions across boundaries.

When it doesn’t, the consequences show up quickly:

• Research fails to secure funding, not because the work is weak, but because its significance isn’t grasped
  
  
• Complex initiatives stall in leadership meetings
  
  
• High-potential experts disengage when their thinking requires constant effort to be understood
  
  
• Organizations lose momentum while competitors move faster
  
  

This isn’t an intelligence problem or a motivation issue. It’s a systems issue.

The Four Dimensions That Determine Whether Insight Lands

In my work with scientists, technical professionals, and global leaders, four interdependent dimensions consistently determine whether expertise translates into influence when it matters most:

• Internal-external integration - aligning how leaders process information with how they deliver it
• Strategic cognition, adapting insight for different decision contexts
  
  
• Clarity of expression, reducing cognitive load for listeners
  
  
• Presence, signaling credibility before a word is spoken
  
  

These are not separate skills developed in isolation. By 2026, organizations increasingly recognized that developing these dimensions together—not piecemeal—is what distinguishes leadership readiness from technical competence.

The Brain Economy Is Already Operational

Forward-looking institutions are no longer treating brain capital as experimental.

Cross-sector collaborations, research institutions, and policy groups are developing frameworks to measure brain capital, design environments that optimize cognitive performance, and understand the return on investments in brain health and brain skills .

This signals a broader shift: brain capital is becoming a formal lens for workforce strategy, leadership development, and long-term economic resilience.

The implication is clear. Organizations that understand this shift early gain a structural advantage.

A Better Starting Point

You can’t manage what you don’t see.

The first step is diagnostic clarity—understanding where brain capital supports performance and where it breaks down under pressure.

That clarity changes how leaders invest, develop talent, and design systems that allow expertise to actually do its job.

The brain economy isn’t coming.
It’s already here.

The real question is whether your organization is equipped to convert insight into action.

Lisa Scott, MS, CCC-SLP, is a communication strategist and executive coach who helps organizations and technical leaders translate expertise into decisions, influence, and execution through integrated brain capital development.