Knowledge is replacing technology as the key enabler of our economy – The case of agriculture

I talk a lot about the knowledge era. I specialize in the measurement, management and monetization of knowledge intangibles. I wrote a book on intangible capital. So what I am about to say shouldn’t be that big a surprise to me but it kind of is….

Technology is not as important as it used to be. Read more

IC and KM – Building from the Bottom Up

Yesterday, I talked about how process can give your organization superpowers. These include processes that support value creation for customers and those that support the internal operations of the company. This list is pretty standard includes infrastructure, human resources, information technology and finance. Each of these functions has its own body of knowledge, competencies and processes. While they are part of the intangible capital of your organization, we won’t spend a lot of time on the details of these classic support systems because these functions are pretty mature.

One support process that is newer and therefore less standardized is knowledge management (KM). This was actually one of the earliest solutions offered by the market in response to the rise of the knowledge economy. The message was simple: If we live in a knowledge economy, we need to manage knowledge. Software and consulting companies sold a lot of people on the concept of KM driven by a faith that if people in an organization could just have access to all the knowledge of their peers, everyone would be smarter and more effective. As often happens with new trends (which always walk the line of fads…) a lot of people thought that this single business function would provide the answer to management in the knowledge era. Check the box and you are a modern company. Of course, this faith was misplaced. This book is a testament to the fact that knowledge and the management of knowledge is about more than a software program.

But that does not mean that KM is irrelevant. Read more

Fighting Flu From the Bottom Up

Our new book has a chapter on how management has shifted from command and control to a model of “orchestration,” which is a term first used by Peter Drucker. The basic idea is that knowledge and communication have been turbocharged by technology. This means that the answers to most questions no longer reside at the top of an organization, as they did in the industrial economy. They are distributed among everyone in the organization. Better actions come when you set free the power of the knowledge and ideas at the bottom of the organization. That turns many traditional management approaches on their head.

The understanding of this is growing throughout our society. That’s why I was really glad to read David Brooks’ take on the global reaction to the swine flu crisis in the New York Times this week. Read more