Intangible Capital Risk Assessment (ICRA): a new framework for SMEs performance management Rony Germon, Patrick Laclémence, Babiga Birregah ICD – CREIDD, UMR STRM – CNRS, University of Technology of Troyes, 12, rue Marie Curie 100010 Troyes rony.germon@utt.fr Abstract— In times of crisis, the best that one can expect from a company is to be able to continue innovate and create new products based on the skills of their employees. In this paper, we consider that each process integrates four basic components of the intangible capital that are critical in the process of innovation and the creation of factors that put the company out of reach of the consequences of crisis. Risk management in SMEs passes through the performance assessment of the set of these four components of the intangible capital by identifying the most vulnerable components. The main challenge lies not only in increasing the intangible capital of business but it control and protection. The corollary of this challenge is to reduce the vulnerability resulting from the weakest component in order to improve the performance of the intangible capital of small and medium sized enterprises. As a result of the vulnerability assessment these companies must establish overall protection from risk, to maintain or increase their efficiency. This paper proposes a new framework for risk management of intangible capital in SMEs, referred to as ICRA. This Intangible Capital Risk Assessment (ICRA) framework aims to provide helpful guidance to SMEs for protecting their intangible capital and optimizing their decision-making. Index Terms— Business, Competitive Intelligence, Knowledge Management, Vulnerability, Risk analysis. I. INTRODUCTION INCE the end of the 20 th century, knowledge and intangible assets have been central into the economy [5] - [10]. A study by the World Bank considers that 86% of the French economy is intangible. Knowledge has become the main thrust for the production of wealth in business [11]. In 1960, Harold Wilensky had already described the vital role of knowledge in the economy and industry [42]. As an important part of the economy, SMEs are included in this dynamic. Competitive intelligence provides the company protection, by taking into account overall risk and threats [46]-[47]-[48]. With competitive intelligence, SMEs can anticipate and protect themselves in a highly competitive environment [6]. In the European Union, they are 19 million SMEs in hugely different sectors, employing nearly 75 million people. These types of businesses represent a pool of economic dynamism and innovation for countries. The European Commission defines small and medium-sized enterprises are companies that possess between 10 and 249 employees and a balance sheet total of at most 43 million euros [39]. Purely quantitative considerations apart, we define SMEs as being small (0 to 250 employees), with centralized management, little specialization, with a single information system and with either a single or poorly organized, intuitive, largely informal external strategy [27], [43]. Although we focus on some of the major specificities of SMEs, one should keep in mind that our generic framework needs necessarily to be adapted to fit the reality of each company. SMEs have very valuable assets, such as flexibility, responsiveness, speed of action to meet the challenges of economic globalization. If they want to survive in an uncertain environment, where new proteiform risks emerge. The goal of SMEs should be “total protection”. [34] - [22]. Total protection must be understand as a goal that should guide the actions of the entrepreneur and motivate his team to be more efficient. But in reality this goal is unreachable. Indeed, as zero risk does not exist, it is the same for its corollary which is the total protection. The intangible capital of a company is a chain that leads to innovation, the creation of factors that set the company apart and added value. The performance of this chain will be evaluated in terms of its most vulnerable link. It is necessary to reduce the vulnerability resulting from the weakest link, to improve the performance of the intangible capital of the company [30]. The real challenge is not limited to increasing its intangible capital, but concern as well within its control and protection. Because of the complexity of each decision, the entrepreneur needs to use efficient decision support tools to help him in his strategic decision-making [37]. The literature is full of generic methods devoted to risk assessment in the socio-technical systems. There are several tools of analysis and risk assessment of information. For more details, the reader should refer to: TRA [45], MEHARI [8], Cramm [24]-[25], EBIOS [1], OCTAVE [2]. The approach presented in this paper focuses on risk analysis on intangible capital. To develop this method we have adopted an approach which is both integrated, iterative based on empirical observations. This paper proposes a framework for the risk management of intangible capital in SMEs. The intangible Capital Risk Management Process aims to provide helpful guidance to SMEs for protecting their intangible capital and optimizing their decision-making. The paper is structured as follows. Section II will be a process-approach description of the S