A quite recent, emerging intellectual capital research stream has established theoretical foundations and provided empirical evidence on how different key drivers and enabling factors, such as the firm’s complementary resources and capabilities, can help to drive the relationship between intellectual capital and firm performance. The objective of this study is to establish a state-of-the-art understanding on the role of these key drivers and enabling factors that affect the relationship between IC and firm performance. This is done by systematically reviewing the empirical IC literature published in peer-reviewed academic journals between January 2000 and January 2022. The results of this study suggest that there are four main categories of the key drivers and enabling factors, which explain why some firms can transform their IC into firm performance and some firms cannot, including knowledge management, dynamic capabilities, IC-friendly organizational culture and climate, and the diversity of firm performance measures. Based on these findings, this study provides managerial implications on how firms can transform their IC into firm performance, and paves way for future research areas that have been left untouched.