About the Speakers:

 

Prof Ahmed Bounfour is the founder and coordinator of the European Chair on Intellectual Capital Management, University Paris-Sud.

 

Mr. Günter Koch composed the model for Intellectual Capital Reporting (ICR) widely applied in Europe, as well as a framework based on Koch’s method, which today is a legal reporting obligation for Austrian universities.

 

Professor Mohammad Hashim Kamali is Founding Chairman and CEO IAIS Malaysia, and a world renowned scholar in his field of specialisation.

 

The New Club of Paris was created as an international forum which actively promotes the ideology of a knowledge economy operating within a knowledge society. They recognise that the knowledge economy has an impact on the value creation process, fundamentally altering the organisation of work, creating new forms of borderless cooperation and intercultural exchange and their manifesto concludes: “In the new understanding of the knowledge society & economy they will engage in a development driven by imagination, creativity and courage towards better intellectual, cultural and social conditions and towards a sustainable, dynamic economy....we support all movements and projects towards better education (systems), more vibrant innovation (systems) and better understanding of the imminent knowledge society and economy. We appeal for higher investments in brains rather than bricks, thereby avoiding misallocations in investments.”

 

Powerpoint presentation (in PDF format) [10.3MB]

 

Summary

Professor Ahmed Bounfour – founder & coordinator of the European Chair on Intellectual Capital Management (University Paris-Sud) & Vice-President of NCP, and Professor Günter Koch the General Secretary of NCP, both gave presentations. Professor Dr. Mohammad Hashim Kamali (Founder & Chairman, IAIS) gave the Response; and the Forum was chaired by Emeritus Professor Osman Bakar (Deputy CEO, IAIS). The New Club of Paris is an international forum promoting fresh conceptions of ‘knowledge society’ and the ‘value creation’ process.

Professors A. Bounfour & G. Koch laid out NCP’s new approach: injecting into global discourse on development an awareness of the importance of society’s non-quantifiable assets, intangible resources, and availability of intellectual capital. Strategies for growth may benefit from shifts underway in the socio-economic systems of nations. The notion of “capital” expands to embrace human–, societal–, and ‘relational’–capital. The notion of “value” may become alive to the knowledge space of inter-related macro–, meso– and micro– dimensions. Given prevailing conditions of ‘liquid modernity’ (an open world, less hierarchy, social networks of interacting domains, a collapsed time span) the need to foster creative innovation and self-confidence in the free exchange of knowledge will fertilize the emerging global conversation.

Professor Kamali’s response stressed that the change of mind-set reflected by the NCP represents a necessary organic corrective to the Enlightenment’s mechanical vision wherein tangible physical assets determined ‘success’ and value creation. Culture, custom, and ethical ideals continue to be operative in the Muslim space, while multiple identities are emerging where pluralism affords an openness to innovation and penetration of values. Above all, there is a need to speak to the majority of people in terms they comprehend.

In the ensuing discussion several significant critiques questioned the viability of the notion of ‘value’ [profit] as an outmoded jargon bearing civilisational baggage. Professor Bakar underlined that Muslims must re-examine their current Islamic mind-set & re-invent their indigenous cultural knowledge-society. Issues touching upon Malaysian higher education and how ‘development’ is conceived must be addressed.