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The dynamics of the development of Intellectual Capital (IC) approaches offer new horizons for establishing and fostering economic development. For the countries with a low level of income the development and implementation of these approaches are of considerable interest to both government and private sectors. In view of this, there is a need for research development of not only theoretical aspects of IC approaches, but also the study of the practical side of international experience of IC methods implementation. This will be crucial in the programmes to support and foster countries' economic development. Assuring sustainable development is one of the key issues of human and economic development. It includes governmental and the private sector's support of economic, social and cultural development of the nation by the use of methods and resources in such a way as to avoid harming future generations. From this point of view, development and implementation of new methods take the intangible factors into consideration, which are renewable and more important for sustainable development than those of tangible ones. Human Capital, which is supposed to be the most significant factor of development in comparison with the social and physical factors, should be efficiently managed in terms of assuring sustainable development of national economic, social and political systems, including sustainable economic development on the micro, i.e. company level. Sustainable management, including Intellectual Capital Management, in its turn can be improved by a tool such as Technology Foresight. The Paper reveals the key theoretical and practical aspects of Intellectual Capital Approaches dynamics for assuring sustainable economic development. The use of a comparative method in the Paper helps to investigate the differences in the approaches in Intellectual Capital in gaining the results of sustainability of economic development. The interdisciplinary character of the Research makes the results more interesting and helps to combine and solve the social and economic issues, which are significantly related to each other. The results of the Paper can be used by academics and government organizers and practitioners, involved in activities related to IC and economic development, in the aims of further development and implementation of the ideas and results of the research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a comparison of different models to estimate intellectual capital at macroeconomic level. In this sense, we include our own approach in the review, showing advantages and limitations. This approach, based on business methodology, is applied to 82 countries and determines the human and structural capitals of these economies. It considers hidden capital as implicit generators of long term wealth, considering not only sustainability and social wellbeing, but also intangible assets such as human development, economic structure, international trade, foreign image and innovation. The results enable us to analyse and quantify the positive relationship among intangibles and their control with the development and economic growth of the different countries. These values also confirm that the gap in terms of intangible capital is widening. That is, the richest countries are the most prosperous in knowledge and above all in management efficiency, as illustrated by the efficiency scores derived from the model. We propose a new model to estimate intellectual capital in order to provide a more realistic picture of the economic potential of nations. We provide a tool for governments to measure their intangibles and, using this as a basis, control them. Finally, we show the relationship between wealth and management efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intellectual capital (IC) is undoubtedly one of the vital elements of firm success especially in a competitive business environment. Firm growth has been perceived as key driver of economic development, competitiveness and employment. Therefore, numerous research studies are devoted to investigation of relationship between IC and firm performance. However, only few studies focused on a relationship between firm growth and IC. The aim of this research is to examine whether the SMEs that invest in IC have higher potential for growth. Data set for this research consists of 271 SMEs from Croatia (with 31.4% of them being high growth SMEs). Enterprise is defined as high growth if it has an average annualized growth in sales greater than 20% a year, over a three-year period. Empirical analysis of a relationship between IC and a firm growth has been conducted in two stages. First part included a comparison of high growth SMEs that have IC reported in their financial statements and those without IC in financial statements, based on main financial indicators, entrepreneur's characteristics, firm's characteristics and environment. Second stage covered a development of high growth prediction model by using logistic regression to: (i) predict probability of SME to achieve high growth, (ii) identify factors that influence growth, and (iii) investigate how intellectual capital influences growth. The results point to a positive relationship between human and organizational capital and firm's growth and confirm that specific elements of human and organizational capital can be considered as one of the key determinants in high growth prediction model. Besides, the study showed that SMEs that have some elements of IC recorded in their financial statements significantly differ from SMEs without IC in financial statements in terms of human capital measured by entrepreneur's experience, education, skills, networks and personality traits. Implications of this study are of value to business owners, managers as well as policy makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]