SUMMARY
Universities have always been fundamental institutions in any society due to their enduring mission of creating new knowledge through research, of training generations of professionals, and providing service for community. They have a long life cycle and need to adapt continuously to their changing environments. In the last decades, the emergence and development of knowledge society put forward new challenges to universities and to managing their intellectual capital. The purpose of this paper is to present three main challenges for the university intellectual capital in the knowledge economy, and to discuss how these challenges can be achieved. These challenges are the following: 1) to unfold the Gordian knot of the canonical model of intellectual capital; 2) to go beyond the Newtonian logic in intellectual capital evaluation and reporting; and 3) to integrate intellectual capital in the strategic thinking of the university. All of these challenges are strongly related to the university performance.