Using an intellectual capital perspective to design and implement a growth strategy:: the case of APiON

Abstract

This paper uses the case of telecommunications software company AP iON to illustrate how the company developed and implemented a growth strategy that allowed it to realize a dramatic increase in shareholder value through proactively focusing on harnessing its intellectual capital (IC) resources. Having surveyed the literature on value creation, categorizing it under financial and economic, strategic, managerial action, and resource-based perspectives, the paper notes that a major criticism that can be leveled at all these perspectives is that they are weak in identifying specific actions and in mobilizing organizational resources to increase shareholder value. Even resource-based theory (RBT) focuses on the development and protection of valuable resources rather than on providing a theory of ‘resources in action’. The IC perspective has emerged alongside RBT as a complementary viewpoint but has a distinctive practitioner bent emphasizing resource accumulation and deployment in the value creation process. This paper presents the key tenets, concepts and language of the IC perspective, illustrating its implementation using the case of AP iON. It closes with some lessons and implications for knowledge intensive businesses.