An Intellectual Capital-Based View of Technological Innovation

Abstract

The growing importance of knowledge as a key productive factor in today’s society requires a change in thinking about innovation in general terms as well as in specific terms, such as technological innovation, product innovation and organizational innovation (Nonaka, 1994). Also, companies are aware that knowledge is the most valuable and strategic resource to face the current environment (Chen et al., 2004). In this sense, intellectual capital is increasingly interesting to companies that get their benefits through innovation and knowledge. For this reason, it is important to study the relationship between intellectual capital and innovation (Edvinsson and Sullivan, 1996). In fact, it is widely accepted that an organization capability to innovate is closely tied to it is intellectual capital, or its ability to utilize its knowledge resources (Subramaniam and Youndt, 2005). So, this research proposes a theoretical model to identify and classify the different elements of intellectual capital (human capital, organizational capital, technological capital, relational capital and social capital) as a source of various types of technological innovation (product, process, radical and incremental innovation), analyzing the relationship between each of those components and the four types of innovation.