Intellectual Capital Factors as the Basis for a Brazilian Competitive Intelligence System.

Two fundamental and recently initiatives have shown that it is time to think about new ways of managing companies, particularly in emerging economies. The paper, "Intellectual Capital Statements in Brazilian SME" (Fernández, et al., 2012), points out that, in the rapidly emerging Brazilian economy, intangible assets become a key success factor for sustainable growth. As experiences in the fast moving city and state of Rio de Janeiro have shown, the development of systematic management procedures for these intangible assets is especially valuable for fast growing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in order to serve as the solid backbone for an increasingly knowledge-based economy. In this context, it becomes an essential management goal to keep productivity at a constant high level, in a dynamic and fast growing business environment, and thus, at the same time, securing individual profits and national welfare. This management challenge has been the starting point for the first pilot-project on implementing the management tool "Intellectual Capital Statement", ICS, in ten pioneer SMEs from Rio de Janeiro. The second initiative described in the paper "Current State of Competitive Intelligence in Brazil" (Sequeira, et al., 2012) highlights that Brazil has been evolving into a knowledge society dealing with political changes, globalization, new technologies, and new global competitors, such as China. The need to enhance companies' and, by extension, countries' competitiveness has grown rapidly. The Brazilian government and companies have realized that competing in a global economy requires a strong vision of what exists outside the country. As a result, Competitive Intelligence is becoming more accepted as a fundamental business function. The paper concludes that organisations in Brazil should seek to engage proactively with the global environment by revising their strategic priorities. It is, therefore, evident that organisations and particularly government policies need to redress some critical competitiveness issues, most notably the establishment of the Competitive Intelligence System as a strategic tool. Without such tool, organisations and the country will find it difficult to position themselves in the global marketplace. Taking into account the main conclusions of the two initiatives described above, and the unique circumstances of organically grown organizations in the Brazilian business environment, this paper discusses the challenge of integrating the ICS into a comprehensive strategic change process. In order to promote sustainable business development in an emerging economy, the ICS has to be used to establish a continuous improvement cycle in the individual company, focusing on practical actions for maintaining and developing its intangible assets to ensure future competition capability. And, in parallel, there is the need for a National Innovator Monitor as a Competitive Intelligence System in order to fulfill the requirements of, at least, four main stakeholders' perspectives: Companies (benchmarking), Policies (innovator monitor), Research (research agenda), and Financial Market (risk assessment). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]