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Intellectual Capital

1.1. Definition of intellectual capital and a brief history of IC management

Before someone can measure something, he/she has to know what to count. So how should intellectual capital be defined? A universally accepted definition is the first step toward standardization, but still it is hard to find the best one for "intellectual capital". In this section I'll define intellectual capital and study the history of its development.

Intellectual capital is knowledge that can be exploited for money-making or other useful purpose. The term combines the idea of intellect with the economic idea of capital, the saving of benefits to be invested in producing more goods and services. Intellectual capital includes the skills and knowledge a company has developed about how to make its goods or services; individual employees or groups of employees whose knowledge is deemed critical to a company's continued success; and its aggregation of documents about processes, customers, research results, and other information of value to a competitor that is not public knowledge. [22]
According the article of Andrew Brown and others "Managing Intellectual Capital", intellectual capital not only includes what are commonly known as legally enforceable intellectual property rights (e.g., patents, trademarks, copyrights) but also all tangible and intangible aspects of intellectual information that a company has developed and accumulated over the years.
Most of the resources propose such a formula for identifying the value of IC:...