The strategic assessment of intellectual capital assets: An application within Terradue Srl

This article describes a framework for the strategic management of intellectual capital assets (ICAs). The framework allows synthesizing the opinions of a firm's human resources on which ICAs are comparatively more likely to have a positive effect on value creation for customers, employees, and shareholders. The framework assesses managers' opinions about the amount of investments that each ICA would require, with respect to the others, to have a positive effect on value creation. By means of a benefit/cost analysis, the researchers recommend ICAs eligible for investments. Then, managers and senior human resources validate the recommendations and identify suitable practical actions for their implementation. The article shows how the implementation of the framework within an Italian firm allows identifying several critical ICAs. Furthermore, the article describes how the validation of the recommendations encourages the implementation of actions that aim to create value for the firm.