Knowledge is What We Buy, Sell and Do (Part 2)

Introduction

‘Knowledge is not the solution, but in the near future, the intellectual capital will be required to deal with the complexity and to support innovation and creativity’ (Brooking,1996:in Carneiro, Journal of KM, 2000).

In the process of creating the Innovation, knowledge sharing takes the biggest and important part. It is about how a team that may contain many different backgrounds of the members put their ideas that will develop the innovation for the company’s benefit.

CREATIVITY, INNOVATION AND COMPETITIVENESS

‘ As every good farmer knows, you can’t expect new plants to sprout from old seed. It takes the seeds of creative thinking, strategic thinking and transformational thinking to cultivate the synergy that fosters new ideas’ (Dundon, 2002:13)

Today’s Knowledge is becoming progressively more useful because management is taking into account the value of creativity, which enables the transformation of one form of knowledge to the next. In the words of Peter Drucker: “Making it productive”.

            ‘Creativity is about divergent thinking and Innovation is about convergent thinking’ ( Gurteen, Journal of KM, 1998). When we generate many ideas, that’s what we called “creativity” and when it comes for us to put them into action, it becomes “Innovation”.  We have to maintain the synergy of both creativity and innovation through our valuable asset,” Knowledge Worker” or we can say that without creativity there is no innovation.

Competitiveness comes after the innovation. That’s why the continuity for making a new innovation or a new knowledge is very important for the organizations or companies. Even though the companies are the pioneer for a new knowledge, but they have to re-new or re-innovate their products or services to avoid other competitors copy their ideas and lower down the market price in order to gain more benefits.  ‘Some company know that the innovation efforts and the adoption of new procedures and new technologies may increase competitiveness’ (Goel and Rich , 1997: in Carneiro, Journal of KM, 2000).

But in some case, it might be wise just leave the product alone without any addition of innovation on it. Coca cola discovered the hard way when it replaced its coke product with New Coke. The only problem was that customer didn’t see anything wrong with the traditional Coke formula and therefore rebelled against the launch of New Coke. It means that innovation isn’t only about new product. Innovation may appears as “adding services”,” adding features and etc.

            Next part, we will see some experiences from the existing companies that survive from the battle of the competitiveness through their innovations.

COMPANY AND INNOVATION

Starbucks  (Changing the image)

             In an effort to keep the formula fresh and appealing, Starbucks was treating 2004 very much as an experimental year. Starbucks want to change the image as a hi tech cafes that offering music CDs-in addition to the high speed internet access provided in over half of its US outlets. By using the computer from HP, Starbucks customer will be able to record five songs into a CD for $6.99. The first Starbucks”Music Cafe” opened in Santa Monica, California. (www.wikipedia.org)

It was a smart changing that based on our modern life and it will be a threat for the music store’s industry. If the Starbucks “Music Café” will open in this country, maybe I prefer to have a cup of coffee (even though I’m not a coffee’s lover)  with 5 choices of my favorite’s song than buy a CD contain 10-12 songs but only 2 songs that I’ll really enjoy, at the Music Store.

Dell,Inc.(Process Innovation)

Michael Dell found a brilliant way to differentiate his product by offering a better selling process which included order fulfillment through 1-800 phone technology and the internet, built-to-order computers, and directly-to-home delivery. It was process innovation, not product innovation that helped position Dell as a leader in personal computer sales.

 CONCLUSION

             We can’t separate the Knowledge from Innovation itself, because Innovation born from the power of knowledge in the Knowledge Worker’s “wet ware” and also from the Knowledge Sharing.  There is another commonly held that innovation is associated with new products, new technology, and the research and development team. As we have seen, innovation can be applied broadly across all elements of the organization, such as existing products, services, programs, process and business models.

 If the companies manage the knowledge as well, gather the creativity of the knowledge worker into a place call innovation, have a good sense of finding the opportunity, they will achieve the key to success. Because, nowadays, company not only face the ordinary customer but “The Creative Customer with their creativity thinking and choice”.  (Nuril KSP)