Intellectual capital and support for collaborative decision making in small and medium enterprises

Abstract

This paper explores how collaborative decision-making can be improved through expanding decision makers’ ability to access and process information related to intellectual capital. We describe the ICS (Intellectual Capital Statement) Process, and supporting ICS toolkit developed by Partners in the InCaS EU project. We describe how they were validated in practice to provide an open, semi-structured methodology designed to help Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) decide on their strengths and weaknesses regarding intellectual capital and its use within the firm. We also describe the creation and emergence of InCapedia, an interactive encyclopaedia for authoring, representing, accessing and communicating anything and everything to do with intellectual capital. We show how, together, InCapedia and the ICS toolkit support both the enhancement of contextual knowledge and the development of proceduralised contexts, and thus have the potential to nurture all aspects of collaborative decision processes in SMEs.