The Knoware Tree and the Regional Intellectual Capital Index : An assessment within Italy

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relevance of intellectual capital (IC) as a strategic resource and source of regional value creation dynamics. Adopting a knowledge‐based approach, the authors aim to argue that knowledge assets represent the IC's components, and the Knoware Tree and the Knoware Dashboard are proposed as frameworks to assess the IC within regions. For the global assessment of the IC, the Regional Intellectual Capital Index (RICI) is to be introduced and its application is proposed for the assessment of the IC within Italian regions. Finally, in order to explore the links between the IC ownership of a region and its value creation dynamics, the Value Creation Index (VCI) is adopted and linear correlations of the RICI and VCI are performed, providing first empirical evidences of the positive links between IC and value creation. Design/methodology/approach – The paper integrates the results of an intensive literature review with a longitudinal empirical research applied to Italian regions. Findings – The paper provides a knowledge‐based understanding of the IC, highlighting the existence of a positive correlation between IC and value creation of the Italian regions. Research limitations/implications – The adoption of linear correlation for analysing the empirical data set could be considered as a research limitation, since more rigorous statistical approaches, such as the robust canonical analysis and the structural equation modelling could be adopted. Practical implications – The paper provides a methodology for assessing IC within regions. Originality/value – The proposed frameworks for assessing IC within regions are original as well as the empirical results showing a positive links between IC ownership and value creation.