Can Ideas be Capital? Factors of Production in the Post-Industrial Economy: A Review and Critique

It is a widely accepted premise that we are in a midst of a radical change of

economy”, “weightless economy”, “post-industrial society” or “information

distinct factor of production, replacing or supplementing land, labour and

capabilities and skills as a new, perhaps overriding productive factor; others

capital to include business processes, intellectual property, product ideas, even

withholding any coherent definition.

capital as the durable result of past production processes, transforming future

economic actor. Second, we offer a taxonomy of the perceived characteristics

that capital, and thus intellectual capital, is not a useful way of theoretically

capturing knowledge and ideas