Intellectual Capital for Enhancing Sustainable Industrialization: Towards the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 9

Abstract

Intellectual Capital (IC) has played a major role in driving growth, competitiveness, and sustainability over decades, improving people’s well-being and the economic performance of businesses. At the same time, the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have emerged as an integrated approach to sustainable development principles of people, planet, prosperity, peace, and partnership, which represent one of the most urgent challenges in our times. The industrial sector is particularly challenged to adopt a sustainable approach to solving development issues by addressing the SDGs. Sustainable Development Goal 9 (SDG 9) is built on three interconnected pillars: infrastructure, industry, and innovation, all of which are strongly interconnected, sharing the common mission of achieving socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable economic development. By adopting SDG 9 and its related targets, the global community can benefit from an industrial development that is inclusive and sustainable, with an impact on all other SDGs. From a strategic perspective, IC is predominantly studied as a bundle of intangibles that creates value, thus embodying a set of resources that are decisive in sustaining competitive advantage, which is necessary for sustainability and for ensuring people’s well-being and economic growth, in line with SDGs. Despite an increasing number of studies exploring the links between IC and sustainability, a major gap emerges in what concerns the influence of IC on achieving SDGs in specific or interconnected goals. Based on the relevant literature, the aim of this paper is to explore how the characteristics of the IC can foster the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, specifically, the sustainable and innovative development of organizations by adopting Goal 9 and its targets. This paper contributes to the literature on IC as a driver for SDGs. In more detail, it opens some avenues for future research on strengthening capabilities to solve development challenges, involving different actors, stakeholders, sectors, and regions.