The Intangible Economy

About this forum series

The information, intangibles and innovation (I3 or I-Cubed) economy is now a reality. Information, knowledge and other intangibles now drive economic prosperity and wealth creation. Intangible assets – worker skills and know-how, informal relationships that feed creativity and new ideas, high-performance work organizations, formal intellectual property, brand names – are the new keys to competitive advantage. Intangibles and information power our innovation process, which is a combination of formal research and informal creativity. These elements combine to produce the productivity and improvement gains needed to maintain prosperity.

In this I-Cubed Economy, the rules have changed. But public policy has not caught up with this new economic environment. Governments are struggling with ways to utilize information, foster the development of intangibles and promote innovation and competitiveness in the new global information economy. Policy makers are grappling with the urgent need to frame policy questions in light of the changing economic situation.

Issues of developing and managing intangibles underlie discussions on a variety of subjects, such as intellectual property rights, education and training policy, economic development, technology policy, and trade policy. Crafting new policies in these areas will require infusing a better understanding of intangibles and the information economy into the public debate.

To help expand the dialogue, Athena Alliance and the Project on America and the Global Economy of the Woodrow Wilson Center are co-sponsoring a series of discussions on policies for the Intangible Economy. This discussion series will explore the concepts and controversies surrounding the issues of the I-Cubed Economy, including managing and regulating intangible assets, fostering innovation and creativity and improving international competitiveness. Our goal is to increase the understanding of how we utilize intangibles so that everyone benefits from the transformation to the information economy.