Intellectual Capital in light of Creativity and Competitiveness: Overview of Organizations’ Intangible Assets

This research paper addresses several issues related to intellectual capital including a historical overview, the interest in elusive and intangible assets, and the impact of latest technological progress associated with the information technology developments. Ralph Stayer, CEO of Johnsonville Foods Company was the first to use the term “intellectual property” to refer to the organization's intangible assets. This paper also identifies the concept of intellectual property being a set of all knowledge capacities of the organizations that help them achieve their goals. The intellectual property includes ideas, inventions, technology, general knowledge, computer soft wares and programs, designs, data skills, processes, creativity and applications in all organizations. The intellectual capital is knowledge that can be converted into profits. The components of this concept were identified as follows: Structural capital, human capital, social capital and the psychological capital. The paper also discusses various definitions provided by several researchers relating to intellectual capital, amongst them: Edvinsson & Malone, K. E. Svieby, Y. Malhorta, T. Stewart, Despres & Channvel, and Mckenzie & Winkelen. Moreover, the researcher tackled different measures used in intellectual property assessment and classified them in the following clusters: (1) descriptive measures/scales that describe some traits and characteristics and are based on exploring views related to identify the impact of the intellectual capital on organizations' business (2) scales and models correlated to the intellectual capital and the intellectual property, which measure the intellectual capital components (3) market value scales and models which focus on the book value of knowledge assets and their market value (4) scales and models of knowledge revenues which are based on calculating returns on assets (ROA). The paper concluded stating that specific issues relating to companies and the nature of the market made it impossible to come up with certain results that can be generalized when making comparison among modern administrative trends or attitudes which defined the intellectual capital as intangible assets. Thus, the researcher urged researchers and parties interested in building up and upgrading companies' capacities to exert intensive efforts to boost investment in human capital for its key and influential role in accomplishing excellence and enhance the position of these companies.