Public Policy and Intangibles: A Conceptualisation and Critical Appraisal

Intangibles assets have long been an important component of the global economic systems, and have become more and more important in recent decades. Intangible assets comprise non-physical and non-financial resources of the firm that yield long-term benefits. There are a number of policies to support the build up and use of intangible assets. However, in this paper we argue that policies towards intangibles show a number of shortcomings. These shortcomings are mainly caused by a neglect of an inherent duality in the characteristics of intangibles that presents important challenges to policy making. On the one hand, intangible assets often play a central role in gaining competitive advantage. On the other hand, from a systemic point of view, individual ownership of intangible assets can limit the sharing and exchange of intangibles that is indispensable for what we call in this paper “intangibles commons”. Policy makers must balance the tensions between supporting firm-specific intangibles and ensuring growing intangibles commons. This paper conceptualises the duality of intangible commons and subsequently explores the tensions arising, examines the gaps in our knowledge needed for effective policy making and presents a set of recommendations as to more appropriate policy making for intangibles.