Innovation

Innovation and Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management is a discipline quite recent especially in Europe.
To the Knowledge Management concept is usually linked that one about a complex technological solution with the aim to favour the Know-how distribution within the organisation, transforming the Know-how in the knowledge distributed : from individual , tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge, available within the overall organization.
The Knowledge Management Systems imply a great importance in the re-processing of explicit knowledge existing and in its internalizing by the individual, contributing to accelerate the time for increasing the company human capital.

In particular the Knowledge Management Systems represent the main tool for a more general activity to manage the company knowledge, that has the aim to create the proper conditions so that new knowledge will be produced and transformed in innovative products and processes .

Erik Brynjolfsson, Professor at MIT Sloan School in Boston Mass, confirms this thesis: “The same quantity of money spent for the same system should provide a real competitive advantage to the organization or company, and just waste paper for others. This happens as the key factor to produce high profits from Innovation is the effective information use, related to the organisation performance.
The open question is about how the Executives should detect the proper and effective information use.

Paul Strassmann, economist and author of "The Squandered Computer" (Economic Press, 1997), and John Seely Brown, Director of Xerox Park Research Centre Palo Alto, California, came across the same conclusions .
Brown in fact underlines in his article "Sustaining the Ecology of Knowledge" as in the last 20 years company with USA capitals spent hundreds of million dollars in investments achieving non relevant improvements for the employees knowledge.

Brian Arthur, Director of Economics Faculty and Demographic Studies at Stanford University says the present-one is the transition era between the economy based upon the information and the economy based upon Knowledge. In the first period the information systems were based upon programming success recipes and they were able to respond to effectiveness assumption based upon the optimization. At present prevention and adaptation capacities are indispensable and based upon the knowledge achieved and developed.
Arthur thinks the business world based upon Knowledge is characterized by the "re-everything", in other words the continuous re-definition of aims, objectives and organisational activities.

The organizations should compete in a market defined by radical and discontinuous changes, that implies a more and more fast cycle between knowledge creation and the capacity to put it into practice, through the dynamic interpretation of the general information collected from all the management systems.

Today nevertheless the business context do not reward the use or defined rules as well as the comprehension and the adaptation to the game rules, at the same time where the game itself keeps on changing.
Chris Argyris thinks this a partial point of view as the adaptation capacity is just the first step and the organisations need to focus on a learning approach as “Double- loop learning". The organisations that create knowledge, “"Generative learning", stress the testing and the feedback in the continuous analysis of the process acted by the organisations, to define and solve the problems.
Argyris, as described in his book “On organizational Learning" thinks those organizations should possess a “systemic thinking”, a “shared vision”, “learning from teams” and” ”creative tension”.

When organisations instead concentrate themselves on the present problems solution , without examining the adequacy of the present leaning systems, the do not act in terms of continuous improvement based upon the successful experiences.
To keep their adaptation capacity, Senge and Argysis suggest the organizations should be able “to test” becoming "self design organization", to keep themselves in frequent condition or continuous change of structures, processes, fields and objectives.

Karl Erik Sveiby, author of "The New Organizational Wealth: Managing and Measuring Knowledge-Based Assets", claims the “confusion between knowledge and information brought many managers to heavy investments about Information Technology, with non-relevant paybacks.
Sveiby asserts the managers should understand that opposite of information, knowledge is inside people and the development of such knowledge happens inside of the process of social interaction,

Donald Schon then, re-opens in front of us the difficulties and doubts related to the Knowledge Management theory, the necessary steps to make forward to obtain “the stability reduction”.
Than means our society and all its institutions live in a continuous transformation state and we cannot expect a new stability that should last for all our life.
We should learn to understand, lead, influence and manage those transformations.
We should acquire the capacity to make useful those transformations to ourselves and to our institutions.
In other words we should put on the learning attitude.
We should be able not only to transform our institutions answering to changes, but we should create and develop institutions that are real 'learning systems', and therefore system able to learn from their own continuous transformation.
The aim related to the stability loss, peremptory for people, institutions, and for our whole society is : to learn, and to learn.
What is the process nature for which organization, institution and society transform themselves ?
Which characteristics are typical of an effective learning systems?
Which constraints are going to be meet by who will test that kind of learning ?

Those are some of the questions the research will face, to make effective the Knowledge Management process inside the organizations, companies and institutions and it is fundamental the organization and individuals gain the learning attitude and the adequate flexibility, to respond to needs of complexity and the future challenges.

	2008 Presidio Sanitario Gradenigo / info@fadgradenigo.it This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. All the project's contents reflect the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.