Intellectual Capital - "The ultimate Resource"

The chief cause of wealth is intellectual capital, since the wealth of nations is based much more on intellectual property and know how than on natural resources. Some nations are very wealthy in natural resources (such as Brazil, Zambia etc.) but still remain poor, while other nations that have virtually no natural resources (Like Japan) can become among the richest in the world

Today, as opposed to the past when the decisive factor of production was land and letter capital, the decisive factor is increasingly human knowledge especially scientific knowledge. Yet enterprise depends also on the capacity for interrelated and compact organisation and on the ability to perceive the needs of others and to satisfy them. These are exactly the factors in which japan is preeminent: scientific knowledge a capacity for organisation and capability to perceive the needs of others and to satisfy them. These tools make japan a country poor in natural resources an economically preeminent country among nations.

Of course, natural resources are still important, but if human beings don’t see their value and figure out ways to bring them into universal use, natural resources may lie fallow forever undiscovered and unused. Oil lay beneath the sands of Arabia for thousands of years, unused regarded as a nuisance until human beings developed the piston engine and learned how to convert crude oil into gasoline. It is the mind of the human that enabled him to make useless crude oil into a highly much needed natural resource.

For this reason, inanimate things are not the deepest, best or inexhaustible resources. The human mind is the “ultimate resource”. It is not the things of the earth that set limits to the wealth of the world. Many of the things of this earth are useful at times depending on the value the human mind sees in them. In this case the human mind is PRIMARILY a source of wealth. And no wonder it participates from afar in the source of all knowledge, an all knowing creator, sharing in Gods creativity. It’s safe to say that the principle source of the human is their own inventiveness. Their intelligence enables them not only to discover the earth’s productive potential, but also the many ways in which human needs to be satisfied.

It should also be highlighted that many goods cannot be adequately produced through the work of an isolated individual; they require the cooperation of many people working towards a common goal.

Do not regard the earth as a realm merely to accept, never to investigate or experiment with; but rather a place in which to exercise human powers of inquiry, creativity, innovation and invention. Humans and everything in it are intelligible because all things – even contingent and seemingly accidental events – spring from the mind of an all knowing creator.

Summing it all up, man, the discoverer is made in the image of God. To be creative, to cooperate in bringing creation itself to its perfection is an important element of the human vocation. This belief that each human being is “Imago Dei” – made in the image of God – was bound to lead in an evolutionary and experimental way, to the development of an economical system whose first premise is that the principle cause of wealth is human creativity

Sow a thought you’ll reap an act;

Sow an act you’ll reap a habit;

Sow a habit you’ll reap character;

Sow a character and you’ll reap destiny