Applying the analytic network process to disclose knowledge assets value creation dynamics

The recent literature grounded on the resource and knowledge-based view of the firm, has widely outlined the importance of knowledge assets as well as of the management approaches of their development. However, only few contributions have investigated the mechanisms by which these resources interact to sustain company’s value creation dynamics. In particular, there is a lack of approaches suitable to disentangle those mechanisms and to explain how knowledge assets cluster and interplay in improving organisational performance.

A clear understanding of how knowledge assets take part in value creation allows to identify those knowledge assets which, due to their critical role in achieving the company’s performance objectives, need to be managed and appropriately exploited.

This paper proposes a model, based on the analytic network process (ANP) methodology, to disclose and assess how knowledge assets mutually interact and take part in company’s value creation dynamics. The application of the ANP allows to reveal and to evaluate the dependencies and inter-dependencies linking knowledge assets to organisational performance objectives and to set priorities among knowledge assets against targeted performance. The application of the model is tested by its application to the identification of the knowledge assets value drivers at the basis of NPD performances improvement within an engineering company located in South of Italy.