Comparing Intangible Assets of the Higher Education System with Industry System based on Resource-based Theory

Resource-based theory has led organizations’ attention to obtain and bring in sustainable competitive advantage and outlined the relationship between organizational resources and performance. At present organizations create and maintain their sustaining value of intangible assets. Intangible assets included experience, talent, the right to register, invented right, copy right, the trade marks and names, the secret formula, knowledge and information which have critical role in the realization of the mission of knowledge creation and innovation. This research therefore, aims to study and compare intangible assets in higher education system and the industry system. An ex-post facto method was applied. Participants included 171chancellors and deans of faculties of both public and private universities, and industry’s general directors. Participants were selected via stratified sampling method. In order to collect data Bontis questionnaire was used. Descriptive statistics, variance analyses, differences among means and t-test were applied for analyzing data. Findings indicate that higher education and industry’s intangible assets are different from each other. Additionally, at present obtaining, creating, managing and protecting the assets are among the most important challenges of the higher education system.