What is knowledge advantage?

An organization with knowledge advantage constantly increases or improves its knowledge stock, engages everybody in learning and innovation, and offers great value to its customers and other stakeholders as a result. Such an organization is a learning organization, an adaptive organization, and an intelligent organization. It is usually managed as a community guided by clearly communicated visions. Experimentation is a common way of life. Open discussions backed by mutual trust take place at every corner and acrosss organizational boundaries. Technologies are used to automate tedious and repetitive tasks. Communication and analysis technologies also allow knowledge workers to excercise creative thinking and to collaborate with each other on tough projects. An organization with knowledge advantage is an adaptive and open system, maximizing its collective inlligence to solve problems and produce value.

Driving Forces of Knowledge Management

Knowledge management is important for organizations because they must effectively respond to multiple challenges originating from both outside and inside the organization. These challenges include: increasing domain complexity, accelerating market volatility, intensified speed of responsiveness, diminishing individual experience, convergence of product and service, and the ubiquitous connectivity.

Effective management of valuable knowledge enables continuous value innovation. Innovative products and services come from innovative people working together in a knowlege-friendly environment. Such an environment involves visionary leadership, proactive and sensitive management, and powerful tools. The famous 80/20 principle works here: 80% of the efforts in knowledge management is organizational and people-related measures and 20% is technology. The significance of technology is determined by the size factors such as numbers of collaborating locations and people and other knowledge components. The larger the organization, the higher the importance of the technology.