In the new age of “knowledge-economy”, intangible capital has developed into a decisive source of success. Intangible corporate capital is more likely to influence innovation, revenue and profits, and promote competitive advantages for companies than physical resources. Intangible capital is a non-financial and non-physical enterprise resource, which results from the interaction of the individual components, namely human capital, intellectual property, and intellectual material. The intellectual material summarizes the knowledge, the information, the databases as well as experiences, etc., which are used to generate values ​​in the enterprise.

The input of intellectual material is information, as well as data, which become innovations through the collective enterprise intelligence (knowledge and experiences). These may represent a preliminary stage of intellectual property or directly of immaterial capital. Although ideas cannot be retrieved automatically, their development process is closely linked to the knowledge of employees, customers and suppliers as well as investors and the available information, the intellectual material. Innovations are the focus of our scientific analyzes and enable us to review the status quo as well as the potential future development paths and impacts.