The World Conference on Intellectual Capital for Communities (14th edition)

The central theme of the 14th edition of the World Intellectual Capital Conference (IC14) is “Safe and Ethical Cyberspace, digital assets and risk: How to assess the intangible impacts of a growing phenomenon?” The conference is organised by the European Chair on Intellectual Capital, the University Paris-Sud and UNESCO’s intergovernmental Information for All Programme (IFAP). Most countries, companies and organizations are concerned nowadays and challenged by cyberattacks and other illicit activities online. This phenomenon is often hidden, but for which there is a lack of analytical tools as well as extensive data, even though several regulations have been put in place to report sporadic incidents.
The growing importance of the digital within the economic system and the increasing dependence of other economic sectors on the IT sector determine today the IT sector as one of the most important sectors. Therefore, the IT sector is subject to a number of cyberattacks of different types and with different aims and strategies. These include industrial spying, but also data breach, aiming to destroy or lower a firm’s profit or an organizations efficiency, or to make profit out of these data breaches, from the attackers’ perspectives. The evaluation of the macroeconomic effects of cyber-attacks helps to estimate the importance of cybersecurity on economic activity and manage risks accordingly, with the help of economic models on growth.

The representative of UNESCO’s Knowledge Society Division will chair the session on “Digital transformation, ethical cyberspace and the policy agenda” with the Chair of UNESCO’s intergovernmental Information for All Programme speaking about the challenges of a “Safe and ethical cyberspace”. Further sessions will debate on “Modelling and valuing the intangible impacts of cyber-risks”, “Intellectual capital of France”, “Intangible capital of Nations”, or “Digital platforms, competition policy and innovation”. The conference will also address topics such as innovation policy, information sharing, knowledge transfer, measurement, valuation and reporting, as well as the next research and policy agenda for intangibles and intellectual capital. These questions are addressed at various levels: countries, regions and territories, cities, firms and networks.

This year, following the success of IC8 (South Korea), IC9 (The Mediterranean), IC10 (Brazil), IC11 (China), IC12 (Africa), and IC13 (Japan), IC14 will focus on France.