vine10.1108/vineVINE0305-5728Emerald Group Publishing Limited10.1108/vine.2009.28739aaa.002e-non-articleSecondary articleGuest Editor’s introduction to the special issuecat-IKMInformation & knowledge managementcat-ISYSInformation systemscat-KMG cat-KMKnowledge managementcat-KMSKnowledge management systemscat-KMSKnowledge management systemsGuest Editor’s introduction to the special issueKevin J. O'Sullivan10042009391© Emerald Group Publishing Limited2009peer-reviewednoacademic-contentyesrightslinkexcludedGuest Editor’s introduction to the special issue

Article Type: Guest Editor’s introduction to thespecial issue From: VINE: The journal of information andknowledge management systems, Volume 39, Issue 1

In this special issue of Vine: The journal of knowledge managementsystems we have presented seven papers developed from proceedings firstpresented at the 5th International Conference on Intellectual Capital andKnowledge Management that was hosted at New York Institute of Technology in NewYork, USA in October of 2008.

The papers presented here are all from a particular track on measuringintangibles and intellectual capital that was facilitated by Bernard Marr of theAdvanced Performance Institute and credit is due to him for putting together anexcellent mini track at the conference. I believe that when you read the papersthat were developed from the proceedings presented at the conference that themini track did indeed succeed in bringing some excellent thought leaders to thefore.

Another note of interest to readers of this journal is that we were honoredto have Dr Michael Stankosky, Editor Emeritus of this journal as the keynotespeaker at the conference. Dr Stankosky’s keynote was very well received bythe over 100 delegates from 23 countries.

Now to the papers within this special issue. We have a collection of articlesfocused on intangibles and intellectual capital. In the first of these, “Thebest returns come from intangible resources: an integrated approach”,Sequeira, Fernández y Fernández and Borges examine existing models forintangible asset valuation and introduce a new approach based on a corecompetencies approach. In the second article, “A learning curveexploratory theory for team learning valuation”, Zorgios, Vlismas andVenieris examine how the quantitative semantics of the learning curve phenomenacan be employed within knowledge-intensive production environments.

In “Intangible asset contribution to company performance: the ‘hierarchicalassessment index’”, Grimaldi and Cricelli define a theoretical modelto assess and measure intangible asset contribution to company performancethrough the use of an hierarchical assessment index (HAI). In “Designingoperative productivity measures in public services”, Jääskeläinenand Lönnqvist present a research paper focused on the role of differentoutput elements of two services provided by the City of Helsinki, Finland. Thepaper illustrates how these factors can be measured in practice.

Brännström and Giuliani present research on an investigation of thefirst year of application of a new accounting principle that contributes to thedebate on how and what intellectual capital should be disclosed in their paper“Accounting for intellectual capital: a comparative analysis”.Following on from this, Cavaller describes the application of scientometrics andpatent bibliometrics in remaining useful life (RUL) analysis for valuingintangible assets.

In our final article for this special issue, Stam contributes a veryinteresting article entitled “Intellectual liabilities: lessons from TheDecline and Fall of the Roman Empire in which he examines not onlyintellectual assets, but their corresponding liabilities which he argues isessential to having a full understanding of the status of an organization’sintellectual capital.

Kevin J. O’SullivanDepartment of Managementand Marketing, New York Institute of Technology, New York, New York, USA