Due to retargeting of business in the 1980s to the growth of its value as a more universal indicator compared with the profits, new management concepts emerged including the concept of intellectual capital, intangibles, BSC etc.  Many articles are devoted to advantages of the targeted orientation of business to maximization of its value, and results of empiric studies, mostly foreign ones, leave no doubts that owners generally approve the actions of managers that increase the business value.  Due to this, companies’ expenses for advanced training of their staff, improving business processes, marketing, branding, increasing customer loyalty etc. started to be called investments, the benefit from which is often the potential or actual growth of the company’ shares value.   Nowadays, the application of the concept of “investments” to such expenses is commonly accepted, including non-public companies. However, the issue of evaluation of effectiveness of such investments has not been solved yet. So, studies related to the need for practical calculation of the economic effectiveness of these investments have become relevant, and a great number of indicators and methods for this have been developed for the last 15-20 years. The on-going discussions and emergence of new methods prove that existing indicators are not quite satisfactory for both owners and managers.This article describes the author’s method that takes into account the shortcomings of existing methods, as well as specific features of Russian companies. The method is based on general principles of evaluation of investment effectiveness that are developed for investments with capital contributions. However, the author has also determined and taken into account all the features of investments for which capital contributions are not required. The method is probed; it is used for the justification of management decisions related to advanced training of personnel, planning of advertising and marketing campaigns, and improvement of business processes.