Summary: | Nations strive to grow their economic and intellectual capital, with innovation generally considered an important strategy and process in achieving these ends. Innovation involves the combination and interaction between the tangible and intangible resources of a nation. In the knowledge economy paradigm, these intangible resources, also known as the intellectual capital of a nation, play a critical role in driving innovation and economic growth. While the traditional view of innovation is mostly about achieving better tangible outcomes, this dissertation takes a different focus and examines the roles of innovation with respect to the key raw material of intellectual capital. A preliminary model is developed based on the identified key roles performed by innovation on the intellectual capital of a nation. This is followed by the development of an analytical model to connect the different relationships of these roles in growing a nation’s intellectual capital while also factoring in the effects of time from sustained innovation efforts. Lastly, a set of measures is proposed to serve as a useful tool in monitoring the growth of intellectual capital from sustained innovation.
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