INTANGIBLE ASSETS, DEGREE OF INNOVATION, AND THE BUSINESS PERFORMANCE OF BRAZILIAN COMPANIES IN THE INNOVATIVE SECTORIAL GROUPS

In the last years, a variety of changes inherent to the organizational environment has been the subject of discussion in the academic and corporate community, identifying innovation as an important determination factor for the best business performance. This scenario induces to the issue that companies with strong innovative character would have intensive investments in intangible and would show competitive advantages that can influence the creation of value for the company - adopted focus as theoretical assumption of the study. The research examines the relationship between intangible assets variables and degree of innovation and the performance of companies listed on the BM& FBovespa, participants of the most innovative sectors of Brazil, according to the Brazil Innovation Index (IBI) classification. It is a descriptive research, with quantitative nature, gathering a sample of 174 companies, comprising the years 2008 and 2009. For this, it was used as proxies: for intangible assets, the accounting values of these assets disclosed in the financial statements of companies and for the degree of innovation, it was considered the group of technological intensity that would fit to the company, according to the sectorial classification of the IBI. The business performance was measured from the market value of the companies and the Return On Equity (ROE) available in the database of Economatica (R). The results indicate that investments in intangible assets have positive relationship with the market value of the surveyed companies, but didn't confirm the same context with the ROE. Relative to the degree of innovation, the results showed a positive relationship between ROE and investments in intangible of the companies that are part of group 3 in the IBI and negative with the company group 2. There is no statistical evidence that can be inferred about the relationship between the degree of innovation of the company and the maximization of its market value.