Intellectual Capital, Firms’ Innovation Growth and Emerging Value Spaces
Special issue call for papers from Journal of Intellectual Capital
Focus:
Over the past fifteen years, intangibles have emerged as an important source of growth and innovation. Several national and international institutions have emphasized their importance: the OECD, the European Commission, the World Bank, METI in Japan, and BNDES in Brazil, among others (Bounfour and Miyagawa, 2015). According to the OECD (OECD, 2013), knowledge-based capital account for 5 to 11% of GDP in most member countries, and play a greater role in productivity growth than tangible capital. At the firm level, the resource-based view (Barney, 1991; Wernerfelt, 1984) as well as the dynamic capabilities approach (Bounfour, 2003, Teece et al., 1997, Teece, 2015) highlight the heterogeneity of firms and the critical role of intangible assets. Intellectual capital of nations and continents has been developed recently as a subject for research and action (Bounfour, 2008, 2018). More generally, Intellectual capital literature need to be extended beyond the sphere of firms and individual organisations (Dumay, 2013).
However, despite this recognition, important analytical issues remain to be addressed, notably modelling the contribution of intangibles to innovation. Various additional questions have also emerged related to new forms of organizations – especially platforms, the critical role of data as intangible assets, and the way firms can take advantage of such ‘new’ assets in the design of their business models. The lack of data availability at the firm level is a key barrier to further analysis of the role of intangibles.