We are witnessing a quiet revolution across the global economy that will exert a major impact on the competitiveness of our companies and regions. For decades, we have measured progress through investment in factories, infrastructure, machinery, and production capacity. Today, an increasingly vital share of the value generated by businesses and regions is built on assets that are not physical. We cannot see them or touch them, yet they increasingly determine our ability to grow and compete in a more complex and sophisticated economy.
The so-called knowledge society, coupled with the digital and tech-driven economy, rests upon technology, data, talent, brands, design, organisational culture, and reputation. According to the World Intangible Investment Highlights 2026 report, co-authored by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and Luiss Business School, global investment in intangible assets surpassed $10 trillion for the first time in 2025. Across the economies analysed, investment in intangible assets expanded by approximately 57% between 2020 and 2025, compared to just 3.2% for tangible investment. In other words, investment in the intangible economy is outpacing traditional capital expenditure and already accounts for 12.8% of the aggregate GDP of these economies.
We are therefore not looking at a conceptual fad or one of those sophisticated corporate buzzwords coined by business schools or marketing labs. We are witnessing a structural shift in how our economies create, capture, and distribute value. It is no longer merely a matter of producing more, faster, and at lower cost. The knowledge economy has introduced a layer of innovation and technological differentiation, but this is complemented by an indispensable new dimension of value: the capacity to generate trust, legitimacy, and, ultimately, preference.
It is precisely here that the intangible economy converges with the so-called reputation economy. Reputation is not simply a communication strategy to build awareness. Nor is it an audacious, creative marketing campaign—though these certainly help. Reputation is a strategic asset rooted in the shared perceptions and beliefs that different stakeholder groups hold regarding a company, an organisation, or a region. It means making purpose, conduct, reliability, transparency, and the positive footprint of one's activity visible and consistent.
In increasingly saturated and volatile markets, reputation and the ability to inspire confidence help curb uncertainty, ease institutional, corporate, and commercial relationships, build customer loyalty, and enable movement into higher-value-added segments. The same WIPO report brings this issue into focus. Global investment in brands reached $1.4 trillion across the economies surveyed in 2025, charting a compound annual growth rate of 4.2% since 2015. This is no negligible figure: it demonstrates that building meaning, recognition, and trust likewise demands productive investment.
All of this becomes especially pertinent with the rise of artificial intelligence. While investments in factories, infrastructure, and machinery remain essential, they do not on their own guarantee sustainable economic transformation. Distinctive value emerges when companies and regions cultivate complementary assets to convert technology into productivity: high-quality data, specialised expertise, organisational capabilities, research, training, and corporate and regional brands capable of inspiring trust and attracting talent and investment.
The commitment to the reputation economy and investment in intangibles should directly challenge our enterprises and public administrations. What we term the non-market –namely, coherently integrating knowledge, talent, and a culture of technological and social innovation into processes, governance, and communication – will prove to be a structural competitive factor. Many companies and regions continue to gauge competitiveness by their ability to draw investment into physical assets, industrial land availability, infrastructure, or cost competition. All of these factors remain important, but they are wholly inadequate to explain why certain ecosystems and regions attract talent, innovative enterprises, capital, and projects while others do not.
“Barcelona's competitive edge will depend not only on what we produce, but also on how we project ourselves and how we organise, and above all on the trust we are capable of generating as a region”
Part of the answer lies precisely in the underinvestment in intangibles. Having sound regional or corporate assets is no longer enough. They must be projected and plugged into key global value chains to translate into a recognisable, compelling, and credible value proposition. For Barcelona, Catalonia, and Spain, the challenge lies in turning existing capabilities into sustainable competitive advantages. A region's reputation does not belong exclusively to a single institution, nor can it be manufactured through a marketing campaign. It is the product of collaboration between businesses, universities, public bodies, and civil society to coordinate research and development, professionalise brand management, foster and safeguard intellectual property, invest in education, craft an appealing value proposition, and design a territorial and business narrative grounded in verifiable data.
Ultimately, in a world where capital, technology, and talent circulate globally, the competitive edge of Barcelona or Catalonia will not hinge solely on what we produce, but on how we project ourselves and how we organise – above all, on the trust we are capable of inspiring as a region and as a community of destination. The next frontier of competitiveness lies not only in backing industrial assets, which remains vital, but in developing those that allow us to transform knowledge into value, and value into trust. The economies and regions that grasp this new dynamic will not only be better equipped to compete, but will also have a greater say in choosing the place they wish to occupy in this fast and furious world.