Ouverture de 'Intangible Assets & Global Competition'

Since the early ‘80s, the global economy has radically changed companies, manufacturing system and products. Global managerial economics demands ramified, far-flung and strongly interconnected organisations (networks). These complex structures favour knowledge management skills, competitive alliances and outsourcing agreements (with co-makers and external partners). Market-space competition also emphasises global economies of scale, whose value does not depend on the level of exploitation of elementary manufacturing factors but on the ‘intensity of sharing’ of specific resources in a networking system. In highly competitive markets, therefore, lasting corporate development does not depend primarily on the volumes of individual products (easily imitated in their tangible characteristics). In fact, corporate success on global markets is conditioned more by the level of sophistication of the intangible assets, developed, maintained and even modified, with targeted spending and investment plans.