ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the research performed by the team of the PRISM network headed by Patrizio Bianchi and co-ordinated by Sandrine Labory. The research showed that the intangible economy neither means that some new assets have suddenly appeared and should now be taken into account nor that new buzzwords has been coined to be used in political rhetorics. The chapter discusses both the indicators of intangible assets currently used and the evidence of the growing importance of intangible assets. It examines the complementarity between assets, in the case respectively of innovation policy and competitiveness policy. Social capital is deeply rooted in a territory, because it stems from the language and the culture of particular societies. A developing country can import tangible assets such as machines and technologies, but it cannot import intangible assets such as social and human capital.
