This work shows that business investment in knowledge-based capital is a key to future productivity growth and living standards and sets out recommendations in the fields of: innovation; taxation; entrepreneurship and business development; corporate reporting; big data; competition and measurement.

A rigorous, pathbreaking analysis demonstrating that a country's prosperity is directly related in the long run to the skills of its population. In this book Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann make a simple, central claim, developed with rigorous theoretical and empirical support: knowledge is the key to a country's development. Of course, every country acknowledges the importance of developing human capital, but Hanushek and Woessmann argue that message has become distorted, with politicians and researchers concentrating not on valued skills but on proxies for them. The common focus is on school attainment, although time in school provides a very misleading picture of how skills enter into development. Hanushek and Woessmann contend that the cognitive skills of the population—which they term the “knowledge capital” of a nation—are essential to long-run prosperity. Hanushek and Woessmann subject their hypotheses about the relationship between cognitive skills (as consistently measured by international student assessments) and economic growth to a series of tests, including alternate specifications, different subsets of countries, and econometric analysis of causal interpretations. They find that their main results are remarkably robust, and equally applicable to developing and developed countries. They demonstrate, for example, that the “Latin American growth puzzle” and the “East Asian miracle” can be explained by these regions' knowledge capital. Turning to the policy implications of their argument, they call for an education system that develops effective accountability, promotes choice and competition, and provides direct rewards for good performance.

Innovation, in economic activity, in managerial concepts and in engineering design, results from creative activities, entrepreneurial strategies and the business climate. Innovation leads to technological, organizational and commercial changes, due to the relationships between enterprises, public institutions and civil society organizations. These innovation networks create new knowledge and contribute to the dissemination of new socio-economic and technological models, through new production and marketing methods. Innovation Economics, Engineering and Management Handbook 1 is the first of the two volumes that comprise this book. The main objectives across both volumes are to study the innovation processes in todays information and knowledge society; to analyze how links between research and business have intensified; and to discuss the methods by which innovation emerges and is managed by firms, not only from a local perspective but also a global one. The studies presented in these two volumes contribute toward an understanding of the systemic nature of innovations and enable reflection on their potential applications, in order to think about the meaning of growth and prosperity.

Knowledge Capital: How Knowledge-Based Enterprises Really Get Built is an integrated, structured set of conversations with thought leaders and key practitioners in the fields of intellectual capital and knowledge management, who examine-in the form of conversations-the steps necessary for creating and implementing the various dimensions of a knowledge-based enterprise. These are the dimensions that need to be effectively addressed for the organization to successfully make the transition from an activity-based organization to a truly knowledge-based enterprise. The conversations that make up Knowledge Capital are not studies of theory separated from practice or practice without a strong theoretical base. Rather, they are the stories of how knowledge-based enterprises really get built, in the words of the people who built them. While every contributor begins from his or her own unique perspective and background, each moves toward a convergent understanding of the core elements, perspectives, and practices involved. These systemic conversations provide a body of knowledge and experience on how to craft and implement strategies, as well as the how values, learning, performance, relationships, innovation, and change play in the development of usable knowledge environment. These explorations, together, lead to a mapping of what are quickly becoming the foundations of the next stage of the field. Knowledge Capital gives the reader a readily accessible collection of insights and experiences essential for the new era in intellectual capital and knowledge management.

This is the first book on a new policy approach that has been widely adopted in Europe and beyond. It analyses the concept of smart specialisation and discuss the need for smart specialisation strategies, explains why the approach is new and different from more standard policy processes and explores what are the conditions for successful implementation. Smart Specialisation: Opportunities and Challenges for Regional Innovation Policy describes the origin of the concept, explains when a smart specialisation policy is necessary, provides a detailed analysis of the design principles of the policy and discuss the pertinence of this approach according to regional development levels. Finally the book discuss the practical implementation phase of the process – based on the first feedback acquired from certain regions engaged in the preparation of their smart specialisation strategy. The book is original in that it provides the first full analysis of smart specialisation strategies both at theoretical and practical levels. It has been written at the critical period of the implementation of smart specialisation strategies in every region in Europe. The fact that the EU has adopted smart specialisation as a mandatory principle for every region and member states will make this book well received by and very useful for: i) policy makers in regional and national administrations in Europe, ii) policy makers in other parts of the world who are in charge of regional policy and have heard about the concept, iii) consultants, analysts and experts who are active on the "markets for smart specialisation diagnosis and expertise", iv) scholars, researchers and graduate students working in the field of regional studies, technology policy and geography of innovation.

Thoroughly grounded in an extensive body of international research and analysis, this book investigates the concepts surrounding a firm’s knowledge capital. These concepts play an integral part in the evolution of economic and managerial thinking, particularly in relation to the themes of firm, knowledge and innovation. The author advocates a greater socialization of the production of knowledge capital that stands in contradiction to the strong appropriation strategies that are predominant today. This book presents a historical analysis of the facts with a strong basis in the recent literature in economics and innovation management as well as in case studies of CAC 40 companies that have been conducted over the course of the past few years.