INTANGIBLES, RESEARCH AND INNOVATION PROCESSES
Roberto Panzarani

Competences and social networks have become the strategic assets to produce value in organization. The moving engine of the modern enterprise is knowledge, which represents the “visible advantage.” But it is on the intangible assets that firms build a sustainable advantage. It is necessary to start form the triangulation between research, training and innovation. This is a paradigm based on three interdependent areas. During the years that have anticipated great technological euphoria, also thanks to a certain measure of market stability, multinational companies felt the need to engage in advanced training activities, connected with research laboratories and experimentation centers. Today training activities and study curriculum should never be excluded by the innovation value chain.
Emotions are intangibles; creativity and ingenuity are intangibles too. These elements were important in the past, but today they are attracting a lot of attention and concern. This concern starts from the new focus on human capital. This last metaphor has its importance in a networked world in which the connection among people, intelligences and brains is the key.
Organizational life is characterized by a new and delicate relationship among tangibles and intangibles. The creative relationship between these two dimensions will determine firm capabilities to produce value. Secondly, the intangibles’ weight will always be greater than tangibles, forcing the passage from the production based economy to a service base economy. For this reason knowledge investments, research & development and technological innovation have and will have higher returns than those on material assets.