The role of intellectual capital in the success of new ventures Esther Hormiga & Rosa M. Batista-Canino & Agustín Sánchez-Medina # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010 Abstract Identifying the factors that contribute to the success of new ventures is a difficult and challenging task. In that respect, this paper proposes an analysis of the intellectual capital within new business ventures. Based on the study of a sample of 130 new companies, for the purpose of this work we have analysed the influence of the proposed intangible assets on the success of newly-created organizations, acknowledging the key role of the human and relational capital in the first few years of the life of the business. Keywords New ventures . Intellectual capital . Success . Intangible assets Introduction The field of entrepreneurship is one of the research areas that have seen the greatest growth in recent decades (Vesper 1996; Gartner 2001; Busenitz et al. 2003). One of the main reasons for that growth is the recognition of new ventures as one of the principal mechanisms generating employment and as a motor of the economic growth of countries by transmitting dynamism and prosperity to a territory and Int Entrep Manag J DOI 10.1007/s11365-010-0139-y E. Hormiga (*) Economics and Business Organization Department, Facultat d’Economia i Empresa, Universitat de Barcelona, Diagonal 690, 08034 Barcelona, Spain e-mail: ehormiga@ub.edu R. M. Batista-Canino : A. Sánchez-Medina Economics and Business Organization Department, Facultad de CCEE y Empresariales, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Campus de Tafira, 35017 Las Palmas, Spain R. M. Batista-Canino e-mail: rbatista@dede.ulpgc.es A. Sánchez-Medina e-mail: asanchez@dede.ulpgc.es