Twenty years of history: the 20th anniversary special issue of Journal of Intellectual Capital The Journal of Intellectual Capital (JIC) recently celebrated its 20-year history of publishing high-quality scientific articles exploring research questions about intellectual capital (IC), including human capital, structural capital and relational capital. In the previous century, most companies were valued primarily on their book value: that is, a publicly traded firm's market capitalization (“market cap” equals share price times number of outstanding shares) was often not much greater than its “book value” (the value of all its tangible assets, like “plant and equipment”), with only a few firms demonstrating higher valuations because of growing sales, brand value, strategic relationships or other factors not found on a firm's balance sheet. Firms and not-for-profit organizations who harness and leverage these information and knowledge artifacts can increase efficiencies and effectiveness, can establish strategic sources of competitive advantage and can ultimately create IC assets, not shown on a balance sheet, which can result in differences between a company's market value and its book value. In turn, it moves the attention to the new societal evolution named Society 5.0 where the human capital is the key pillar of business growth and society well-being.