Abstract:     Intangible assets play an important strategic role in enhancing the core competitiveness of enterprises and promoting their sustainable development. However, existing literature is limited in the field of transformation of the components of intangible assets. Therefore, this study introduced the concentric zone theory into the field of intangible assets management, and constructed a concentric-zoned structure system of intangible assets driven by the learning ability of human capital and transformed layer by layer from inside to outside. In addition, this paper constructed a multivariate linear regression model to empirically test this concentric-zoned relationship and explored the impact of comprehensive cost on this relationship by taking the 2011-2019 data of China′s A-share high-tech manufacturing firms as a sample. The empirical results showed that the intangible assets have the characteristic of “concentric zone” which is transformed in the sequence of “human capital-based intangible assets — technology-based intangible assets — goodwill-based intangible assets” layer by layer. Furthermore, this study found out that the transformation process from human capital-based intangible assets to goodwill-based intangible assets is further intensified in the context of rising comprehensive costs. These findings still hold after considering the results of robustness tests such as one-period lags of independent variables and the replacement of model test methods. The innovation of this paper is that it will combine the concentric zone theory with intangible assets research, and further clarify the transformation mechanism and path of the internal composition of enterprise intangible assets from the perspective of concentric-zoned structure. This paper is of great significance for intangible asset management and theoretical research.

Key words: concentric-zoned system of intangible assets, human capital-based intangible assets, technology-based intangible assets, goodwill-based intangible assets, comprehensive cost