Intangible asset contribution to company performance: The "hierarchical assessment index"

Purpose: This paper aims to define a theoretical model that assesses and measures the intangible asset contribution to company performance. The model keeps in focus the most meaningful elements that reflect the success factors, crucial to company business strategy and value creation. Design/methodology/approach: The model adopts a hierarchical structure. The strategic intangible assets of the company have been divided into value drivers; a series of measurement indicators have been selected to describe the characteristics of each aspect of the intangible company performance. The measurements obtained from numerical indicators, which express the totality of the results achieved by the organizational strategies, are combined to create the hierarchical assessment index (HAI), by assessing quantitative and qualitative company features, through the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). Findings: The HAI identifies the sources of added value and competitive advantage in each business context; it traces the subordination of every element on company performance, and singles out those intangible assets that improve the company performance, at every level of the hierarchy. Practical implications: The HAI provides guidelines to understand what are the key intangible factors to create the value of the company and suggests the implementation of corrective strategies. Originality/value: The HAI is the expression of the combination of the objective measurements of intangible assets with the subjective contributions by the managers. In fact, besides the numerical results of the performance of every element in the hierarchical structure, the managers' opinions about the significance of their performance are also considered. Thus, objective and subjective evaluations jointly contribute to suggest the way to achieving the expected objectives.