Purpose: This article aims to provide a bibliometric and systematic literature analysis of studies published in the Journal of Intellectual Capital (JIC) from 2014 to 2018 in order to highlight emerging themes and future trends.Design/methodology/approach: The analysis focused on 187 papers published on JIC over a period of five years. A scientometric approach to data mining enabled the detection of patterns in the dataset. Precisely, the investigation was conducted by integrating a bibliometric analysis on VOSviewer with a systematic literature review.Findings: Four main streams of research on JIC emerged in the years of the analysis: reporting and disclosure of intellectual capital; intellectual capital research in universities, education and public sector; knowledge management; intellectual capital, financial performance, and market value.Research limitations/implications: The study offers valid insights to the topics covered by the Journal of Intellectual Capital by identifying the main research gaps and trends, along with future research avenues.Originality/value: Prior scholars mostly focused on systematic literature reviews, whilst the use of bibliometric methods generally seems to be a missing tile in the research domain. Also, none of the extant studies has focused on the Journal of Intellectual Capital with reference to the 2014–2018 period. The use of both bibliometric and systematic approaches to literature review delivered extremely fine-tuned results in terms of factors such as citations, contents and evolution of clusters over time.

This article originally seeks to explore the impact of R&D investments and societal culture on green technology management, by applying Hofstede's cross-cultural perspective. At large, we investigate if green innovation is positively associated to country cultural indulgence, as this factor indicates that basic needs are already satisfied and there is room for looking into hierarchically higher concerns. We also argue that governments’ expenditures in green innovation tend to be more effective than those of firms, because governments are more willing to invest and risk in radical innovations than businesses. The analysis is conducted on a large-scale sample of data drawn from Eurostat, including information on R&D expenditures and on eco-innovation index from European firms and governments. The results confirm our model hypotheses: governments’ investments largely predict eco-innovation, differently from firms’ expenditures. Moreover, as supposed, country's cultural indulgence has a positive effect on the eco-innovation index as well.

Purpose: This study aims to extend the knowledge in the domain of intellectual capital and entrepreneurship by investigating whether happiness may have a positive influence on entrepreneurial initiative and intellectual property or not.Design/methodology/approach: The used large-scale dataset for 2018 is drawn from the Eurostat. It includes information on individual happiness, sustainability, start-ups, creativity, intellectual property and quality of life, grouped by European countries. Hypotheses are tested through using the linear regression method.Findings: The findings confirm that happiness, along with creativity, fosters both entrepreneurial initiative and intellectual property.Research limitations/implications: Future studies should test the model by extending the analysis to different world regions and by considering further variables, such as country culture.Practical implications: The study suggests that policy makers have to focus on improving life conditions and sustainability as a means to foster local economies and communities.Originality/value: This cutting-edge study is unique in its genus, because the prior literature never focused on these topics jointly. At an academic level, it ties happiness to creativity and to “the entrepreneurial spirit”, thus opening up to a new and vast domain of researches.

Purpose: The study aims to explore the interplay between open innovation and intellectual property. Differently from previous studies, we argue that open innovation fosters firm's patenting activity.Design/methodology/approach: We use linear regression analysis to test model's hypotheses. Data are drawn from the Eurostat statistics and refer to a large sample of European firms (NACE Rev.2).Findings: The findings confirm that open innovation fosters patenting activity in health care, also thanks to huge governments' expenditures in this market.Research limitations/implications: The study focuses solely on European firms and it adopts a traditional linear approach. So, we cannot exclude that different dynamics may occur across European borders. Future research should address this concern by focusing on multi-country comparative studies.Practical implications: Open innovation is the most suitable model for health industry, because it improves both innovation performance and intellectual capital of firms.Originality/value: The study tackles an existing gap of the literature by considering how the presence of large customers impacts the strength of intellectual property protection.

Purpose: The study aims to investigate the interplay among digital technologies, intellectual capital and innovation. Thus far, there have been scant research on such intricate bundle of interactions. Also, the findings of previous studies were rather inconclusive, because conflicting results emerged over time. Building on the existence of heterogeneous evidences, this study solved the detected criticism by suggesting a curvilinear relationship among digital technologies, digital skills of human capital and intellectual property. Specifically, we argue that the relationship between digital technologies and intellectual property is inverted u-shaped.Design/methodology/approach: Hypotheses are tested by applying a generalized linear model (GLM) regression analysis and a quadratic model for non-linear regression. The study analysed a large-scale sample of micro-data drawn from Eurostat. Such sample embraces the population of firms operating in all European member states.Findings: Overall, the results of the study confirm that digital technologies are curvilinearly related to intellectual property. Precisely, the curve is inverted u-shaped. Notably, results show that digital skills only matter when employees have very demanding duties to accomplish. In all other cases, digital skills do not affect intellectual property significantly.Research limitations/implications: The research is solely focused on firms' operating in the European Union. Future studies should extend the analysis to other geographies.Practical implications: At a real impact level, the study suggests that intellectual property is only partially fostered by digital skills and digital technologies. In this sense, digital skills might be overrated.Originality/value: Differently from prior research, this study originally detangles the impact of digital technologies on firm's intellectual capital by suggesting the existence of an inverse u-shaped relationship between variables.