Intellectual Capital Statement in IPS2

Abstract

Industrial product service systems (IPS2) are holistic, innovative and customer individual problem solutions. An IPS2 includes integratively developed product and service modules. The integrative character challenges the IPS2 development by steering interactions between people from different disciplines (product and service) within the provider's company. Further, the provision of IPS2 requires various competences. Consequently, the IPS2 provider needs cooperation partners in order to fill competence gaps and to concentrate on own core competencies. This kind of interaction has also to be steered target-oriented. Further, the long duration of IPS2 business relationships and incomplete information about future changes cause uncertainty in the decision making along the IPS2 lifecycle. An innovative method for steering interactions and dealing with uncertainty is the Intellectual Capital Statement (ICS). The goal of the ICS is the early detection and target-oriented development of intangible innovation and success potentials. It goes beyond the traditional financial balance sheet and focuses on three kinds of capital, namely human capital, structural capital and relational capital. As the ICS focuses on intangibles, its application to the IPS2 context appears reasonable. The main difference by using ICS for IPS2 is that this method is dimensioned for companies as well as single departments. The challenge is to transfer the ICS from the system boundary of one firm to an IPS2 and therefore to a network of companies. This paper gives answers to the questions why an ICS is necessary in the context of IPS2 and what adjustments are required in order to adapt ICS for IPS2.