Visualising the Invisible: Measuring and Reporting on Intangibles and Intellectual Capital

In recent years, one of the most important emerging features of economic systems and organisations is the role of intangibles in wealth creation, which are for this reason often comprehensively referred to as Intellectual Capital. Even though intangibles have always been important for running economic activity, they are nowadays at the centre of an increasing interest by the scientific community and the practice world. The attention devoted to this subject area is becoming very substantial when considering the large number of articles and books published in the last decade or so, as well as the major events and projects promoted by numerous national and international institutions (European Commission; OECD; United Nations; various country governments such as Denmark, Japan, Germany; Brookings Institution, and so on). The underlying reason is that intangibles are strongly considered as today’s major value drivers of firms, industries and regions, and therefore to measure, analyse and manage them is a crucial effort in the direction of comprehending and improving value creation with reference to the different economic levels and sectors. The awareness of the need for new research on intangibles is the fundamental drive that stimulated this book. It derives from a two-year interdisciplinary project, funded by the Directorate General “Information Society Technologies (IST)” of the European Commission, and named PRISM (“Policy making, Reporting and measuring Intangibles, Skills development, and Management” – http://www.euintangibles.net). In particular, the research presented in this book essentially collects the revised version of the studies developed within the Ferrara University’s research unit on “Accounting, financial analysis and audit in the intangible economy” led by Prof. Stefano Zambon. The research outcomes of this unit have been integrated into this publication accompanied by other works of distinguished scholars dealing with important and emerging topics in the field . The book aims to offer new insights into the measuring, reporting, evaluation, and management of intangibles, and the use of associate information in a variety of contexts and settings, not only linked to profit-making entities and the micro level.