Siegfried Reich

Intellectual Capital Reports

May 18th, 2006

Salzburg Research has just published its annual report. As for all non-commercial organisations, the real asset of institutions such as Salzburg Research lies in its Intellectual Capital; therefore, we publish an intellectual capital report (“Wissensbilanz”) as part of our annual report (since 2002, btw).

Originally, in 1994 Skandia AFS published a supplement to its annual report about talking about “hidden values in Skandia” (see the document Visualizing Intellectual Capital in Skandia).

ARC Seibersdorf and its former head of research, Günther Koch, have definitely promoted ICRs in Austria, see for instance a presentation to the World Bank entitled “IntellectualCapital Reporting (ICR) (“Wissensbilanz”) – Made in Austria”.

Stefan Weiß, Futurelab, discusses the (German) term “Wissensbilanz” and argues that it is misleading, as it does not distinguish between assets and liabilities (like a typical balance sheet does, see a blog entry on ICR vs. Wissensbilanz).

From our experience, I would argue that the core issues of ICRs include

• the definition of terms
• the methodology and process of generating the ICR, and
• the way to influence the indicators (because almost all indicators can only be influenced with indirect means)

A general terminology would be useful for monitoring and moreover benchmarking between organisations – Koch discusses some of the differences concerning the structuring of categories of intangible capital in major models in the presentation mentioned above.

The Fraunhofer-Institut für Produktionsanlagen und Konstruktionstechnik (IPK)has established a working group on promoting ICRs.

Daniela Gröbel/ Klaus North/ Günther Szogs provide a comparison of four different approaches.

Entry Filed under: Innovation,Method,Technology