Antonio Lerro

THE INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL DIMENSIONS OF DUCATI'S TURNAROUND: EXPLORING KNOWLEDGE ASSETS GROUNDING A CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROGRAM

Despite the growing awareness of the importance of researching core strategic resources and capabilities for supporting organisational change, the work that has been done to the date has rarely examined and taken into account the relevance of Intellectual Capital (IC) for the success of a companys strategic turnaround program. Moreover, little attention has been given on what encompasses IC and how it can be conceptualised and interpreted in a change management perspective.Through an extensive review of the literature on IC and along with a case study of the Ducati Motor Holding — one of the leading world brands in the sportive motorcycles manufacturing — this paper aims to bridge this gap first of all by identifying which are the key-knowledge assets involved in a turnaround program, and then focusing on the impact IC has on turnaround actions.Findings highlight important implications both for theory and practice, and reveal interesting relationships that suggest further effort should be placed on the development of a knowledge base-view of companys turnaround and on the analysis of the dynamics that links knowledge assets and successful change management programs.

Knowledge‐based capital in building regional innovation capacity

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role and the relevance of knowledge‐based capital as a strategic resource and a source of regional innovation capacity. The paper identifies human, relational, structural and social capital as the four main knowledge‐based categories building the knowledge‐based capital of a region. The role of each knowledge‐based category in determining regional innovation capacity is analyzed. Specifically, the authors discuss the relationships among the knowledge‐based categories and a regional innovation capacity.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on an in‐depth literature review of the knowledge management and regional innovation research stream. The fundamental underlying research questions that have driven the research are: “What are the knowledge‐based capital categories affecting a regions innovation capacity?” and “How do knowledge‐based categories influence regional innovation capacity?”. The paper is conceptual in its nature and aims to ...

The Knoware Tree and the Regional Intellectual Capital Index

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 ICs 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 applie...

Knowledge assets assessment strategies: organizational value, processes, approaches and evaluation architectures

Purpose – Companies coping with global business are called more and more to lead their transformation into intelligent organizations, i.e. organizations able to leverage their intellectual capital to achieve their business objectives and envision new development paths. This paper, assuming that the organizational intellectual capital corresponds to the knowledge assets attributed to a company, aims to discuss the organizational value, the processes, the approaches and the evaluation architectures of the knowledge asset assessment strategies.Design/methodology/approach – On the basis of a literature review, first the sub‐processes of the assessment are discussed, highlighting the main features of the assessment of knowledge assets as well as the twofold nature of the knowledge asset assessment, distinguishing between stock and flow perspective of the evaluation. Second, the managerial reasons at the basis of the implementation of measurement systems for disclosing organizational knowledge resources are dis...

Knowledge‐based dynamics of regional development: the case of Basilicata region

– The purpose of this paper is to analyse the knowledge dimensions grounding regional development dynamics., – The paper first provides a knowledge‐based interpretation of regional development and afterwards the knowledge assets categories at the basis of value creation dynamics at regional level are discussed. The aim is to define a conceptual framework addressing the knowledge assets categories affecting the development dynamics of regions and territories. To support these arguments, the paper integrates the conceptual framework with the analysis of a case study of an Italian region. The paper provides the case example of Basilicata region, which has planned and implemented policies aimed to activate and support regional strategic development by focusing on knowledge assets dimensions. The paper combines a deductive approach with an inductive one. The knowledge assets dimensions grounding regional development dynamics are identified through a review of the literature. Then, the conceptual framework is integrated by the analysis of a case study aimed to enrich the proposed conceptual arguments with empirical evidences., – The paper highlights the strategic relevance of knowledge capital in sustaining and driving regional development dynamics. The knowledge assets dimensions grounding regional development are discussed, providing insights for both research and practice., – This paper contributes to further develop the knowledge‐based view of the regional development dynamics. The paper provides implications for future research and useful insights for policy making.

Managing knowledge processes for value creation

Purpose – Nowadays organizations have realized that knowledge, its effective use and the fast acquisition and utilization of new knowledge represent the only source of sustainable competitive advantage. In fact, an effective exploitation and management of knowledge resources are the basis of the development of those capabilities that ground the organizations capacity to deliver successfully targeted value propositions. During recent decades, there has been a growing interest in the processes of management of knowledge resources. Currently the debate on knowledge management processes is still lively. The dynamics which link knowledge processes to value creation, the valuation of their impact on organizational performance and the role of some organizational and technological resources as enablers or restraints of successful knowledge management emerge as relevant topics to be investigated. This introduction to the special issue aims to develop some theoretical and managerial reasons explaining the importan...

Managing intellectual capital dimensions for organizational value creation

Purpose – This introduction paper to the special issue on “Managing intellectual capital dimensions for organizational value creation” aims to focus on the relationships between intellectual capital (IC), innovation, performance improvement and competitive advantage in private and public organizations. The purpose of this paper is to review and underline some relevant theoretical pillars and contribute to the ongoing debate on how knowledge assets may impact organizational performance and innovation dynamics. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on a deep analysis of the managerial literature addressing the nature, the role and the relevance of the IC dimensions for organizational value creation. The conceptual background sets the foundations for a better understanding of the strategic importance of knowledge-based value drivers for innovation and sustainable competitive advantage. Findings – This paper provides a framework summarizing the key assumptions at the basis of a better understanding...

Intellectual capital assessment practices: overview and managerial implications

Purpose – Acknowledging the strategic relevance of assessing and managing intellectual capital (IC), this editorial first aims to discuss a classification of the IC assessment strategies and second seeks to introduce the main topics investigated by the papers collected in this special issue. The notion of IC assessment strategy is interpreted as the set of economic and managerial decisions and purposes characterising the assessment of an organisations knowledge assets. It is argued that the definition of a knowledge asset assessment strategy has to take into account two dimensions: on the one hand, the nature of the managerial approach to be adopted for the assessment, distinguishing between “value management” and “value communication”; and on the other hand, the most appropriate “evaluation architecture” to be used in order to gather and report the assessment information for control and decision making.Design/methodology/approach – The approaches, evidences and insights discussed in this introduction re...

Knowledge-based dynamics of regional development: the intellectual capital innovation capacity model

This paper primarily aims to address the following two key questions: Do intellectual capital (IC) dimensions matter for regional innovation? And, if regional development can be explained in terms of knowledge-based dynamics, what the key IC pillars are driving wealth generation? In order to do so, this paper discusses the IC dimensions of regional development, particularly the adoption of the model of the knoware tree. The paper also introduces the IC innovation capacity model in order to explain why IC should be addressed from policy and strategy point of views as a key driver of innovation processes of local systems.

The impact of intellectual capital on regional development: an RCA application

Theories that emphasise the new role of the region as unit of economic analysis and the territorial sphere most suited to the interactions of political, social and economic processes in an era of globalisation highlight the importance of intangible and knowledge resources for activating and enhancing regional development patterns. A concept that captures holistically the relevance of this kind of resources on regional socio-economy is Intellectual Capital (IC). This work proposes a multidimensional perspective of regional development based on the notion of value creation. Using Robust Canonical Analysis (RCA) with data of the Italian Regions, the relationship between ownership and use of IC and regional development is demonstrated empirically.