The Knoware Tree and the Regional Intellectual Capital Index. An assessment within Italy
| Date | 18 April 2008 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14691930810870346 |
| Pages | 283-300 |
| Published date | 18 April 2008 |
| Author | Giovanni Schiuma,Antonio Lerro,Daniela Carlucci |
| Subject Matter | Accounting & finance,HR & organizational behaviour,Information & knowledge management |
The Knoware Tree and the
Regional Intellectual Capital
Index
An assessment within Italy
Giovanni Schiuma
Center for Value Management, DAPIT, University of Basilicata, Potenza, Italy
and Center for Business Performance, Cranfield School of Management,
Cranfield University, Cranfield, UK, and
Antonio Lerro and Daniela Carlucci
Center for Value Management, DAPIT, University of Basilicata, Potenza, Italy
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relevance of intellectual capital (IC) as a
strategic resource and source of regional value creation dynamics. Adopting a knowledge-based
approach, the authors aim to argue that knowledge assets represent the IC’s components, and the
Knoware Tree and the Knoware Dashboard are proposed as frameworks to assess the IC within
regions. For the global assessment of the IC, the Regional Intellectual Capital Index (RICI) is to be
introduced and its application is proposed for the assessment of the IC within Italian regions. Finally,
in order to explore the links between the IC ownership of a region and its value creation dynamics, the
Value Creation Index (VCI) is adopted and linear correlations of the RICI and VCI are performed,
providing first empirical evidences of the positive links between IC and value creation.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper integrates the results of an intensive literature review
with a longitudinal empirical research applied to Italian regions.
Findings – The paper provides a knowledge-based understanding of the IC, highlighting the
existence of a positive correlation between IC and value creation of the Italian regions.
Research limitations/implications – The adoption of linear correlation for analysing the
empirical data set could be considered as a research limitation, since more rigorous statistical
approaches, such as the robust canonical analysis and the structural equation modelling could be
adopted.
Practical implications – The paper provides a methodology for assessing IC within regions.
Originality/value – The proposed frameworks for assessing IC within regions are original as well
as the empirical results showing a positive links between IC ownership and value creation.
Keywords Knowledge management, Intellectualcapital
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Political, economic and socio-cultural changes have recently determined a new
attention towards the regional phenomena (Tomaney and Ward, 2000). Regions are
recognized important unit of economic analysis, where political, social and production
processes and interactions take place (Amin, 1994; Clavel, 1998; Giddens, 1998; Harvie,
1994; Sharpe, 1993; Tomaney and Ward, 2000). Value dynamics of regions play a
fundamental role for local as well as national growth and wealth creation. Recogn izing
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1469-1930.htm
The Knoware
Tree
283
Journal of Intellectual Capital
Vol. 9 No. 2, 2008
pp. 283-300
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1469-1930
DOI 10.1108/14691930810870346
the relevance of the regional phenomena, scholars, managers and policy-makers are
increasingly debating on the meanings, contents, forms and policies of regional
development (Budd and Hirmis, 2004; Kitson et al., 2004; Porter, 1990). Within this
debate, one of the key issue is the identification, understanding, assessment and
management of the key-factors and sources of regional development. Some of the
fundamental questions to be addressed are: What are the key value drivers to spur and
sustain the development of regions? How to identify and assess the critical success
resources at the basis of local growth? What are the new conceptual frameworks to be
applied in order to plan and implement policies and programs for local wealth creation?
Which is the role and relevance of intellectual capital for value creation dyn amics of
regions?
It is undoubted that regions as well as nation, clusters and local production systems
develop according to different path or, more commonly, can be characterized by
different economic and production success models. In order to explain why some of
them are more successful than others, or, in other terms, create more value, economists,
both neo-classical and Keynesian, have traditionally focused the attention ma inly on
natural capital, physical capital and financial capital as key sources of economi c
development and a vast body of theoretical and empirical literature has examined these
relationships.
In the last decades, according to a wide acknowledgement of the strategic role of
intangible resources for organizational success, researchers and policy-makers have
been inquiring the position and the relevance of knowledge resources as sources of
local and regional development dynamics (Albino and Schiuma, 2003; Bontis, 2004;
Bounfour and Edvinsson, 2005; Doeringer and Terkla, 1995; Edvinsson, 2002;
Edvinsson and Stenfelt, 1999; Hassen-Bauer and Snow, 1996; Rosenfeld, 1996;
Saxenian, 1994; Schiuma et al., 2005; Tallman et al., 2004). Specifically, within the
regional development study streams, this attention can be traced back on the
assumption that in a global economy, regions’ success is increasingly based on the
ability of its stakeholders to develop, maintain and exploit unique and differentiating
competencies and resources. It is argued, that the definition and explanation of regional
development need to reach well beyond concern with “hard” productivity to consider
several other – and softer – dimensions of the regional growth, and particularly
non-economic dimensions, such as cognitive, social, cultural and institutional factors
(Maskell et al., 1998). This understanding is coherent with the recent micro-economic
based strategic approaches to competitiveness, i.e. the resource based-view, the
competence based-view and the knowledge based-view. These theory ap proaches,
although from different and complementary perspectives, stress that in today’s
economy sustainable growth is grounded on the development, acquisition, control and
management of key assets which are strongly tied and idiosyncratic to their context.
Recently, many scholars have highlighted the relevance of intellectual capital (IC) as
a strategic source of sustainable competitive advantages for meso organisation
systems, such as local production systems, clusters, cities, regions and nations (Bontis,
2004; Doeringer and Terkla, 1995; Edvinsson, 2002; Bounfour and Edvinsson, 2005;
Malhotra, 2001; Rosenfeld, 1996; Schiuma et al., 2005; Tallman et al., 2004).
Different theoretical and empirical studies of local economic and production
systems success story, such as the Italian industrial districts (Becattini, 1991; Pyke and
Sengenberger, 1992) and the clusters (Porter, 2000; Saxenian, 1994) show that the local
JIC
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