Factors that affect the successful commercialization of intellectual capital

Abstract

This research has investigated factors that affect the successful commercialization of intellectual capital. The concept of social constructs of meaning for the interview participants provides the fundamental perspective of this research. The research was undertaken on the basis of a constructivist ontology, the epistemology was interpretivist, and a qualitative methodology was used. A constructivist ontology was selected due to the research aim to understand the perceptions of the interview participants. The interpretivist approach provided the framework to interpret meaning of the perceptions in the appropriate business context. The data collection methods included unstructured interviews of people holding key decision making positions within their organizations. The conceptual nature of intellectual capital and commercialization enabled the research to be viewed from a phenomenological perspective and aspects of grounded theory were applied in seeking meaning from interviewee perceptions to surface a theoretical model. The data analysis included coding of the interview transcripts utilizing NVivo qualitative research software and sorting the data into nodes. The nodes represented categories of information which became the foundations of the constructs. These nodes were examined for relationship and meaning until a theoretical model emerged from the data. The findings culminated in six (6) main constructs which were subsequently aggregated to form a composite model of factors which influence the commercialization process.In addition a further discovery was made in terms of an `Intellectual Capital Approach' model which enables a classification and hierarchical relationship of intellectual capital to be mapped as a starting point for problem solving and strategy formulation. The results of this research have immediate application to business in terms of informing management about identification of intellectual capital and to consider alternative scenarios for wealth creation by way of commercialization.