. It could be difficult to identify the supplier of intangibles. A university delivers the intangible product of knowledge. Who is the supplier of that knowledge? The knowledge may be viewed as coming from a lot of suppliers, including many who are not compensated for supplying the knowledge. Examples include knowledge from books the instructor checks out at the library, knowledge from the instructor's interaction with other colleagues, and knowledge from the instructor's experience outside of academia. When an instructor delivers an excellent lecture on a given topic, does anyone attempt to go back and recognize or compensate the supplier of the topic knowledge? Is it even possible to trace the origin of the knowledge? Probably not. This implies that the supply chain of such anintangibleisvirtuallyintractable,andthusdifficulttomanage.