Intellectual capital and innovation: a systematic literature review

Innovation is a cornerstone of firms’ performance and survival. Although existing literature suggests a connection between Intellectual Capital and Innovation, this relationship has been analysed through various lenses and methodologies and there is no dominant framework. This raises the question where the study of the relationship between intellectual capital and innovation currently stands, and we address it by performing a systematic literature review of 178 full-text papers published between 1998 and January 2021, indexed in ISI Web of Knowledge – Current Contents. We examine the existing research on the Intellectual Capital – Innovation nexus, identifying the main research areas and setting the stage for future studies. Our findings reveal a growing but unstructured body of work, organized mainly around Intellectual Capital components (human capital, structural capital, and relational capital) and their specific roles in driving innovation. This article provides a theoretical framework for consolidating knowledge on the relationship between Intellectual Capital and Innovation, outlining practical implications and emerging research directions.