The quest of the modern corporation for agility
stems not only from fear of threats to which it cannot react, but also
from the great sense of opportunities existing in abundance if it can
only adapt itself rapidly enough.
The challenge is to
engage with changing markets, in the time of their changing, and not
after competitors have picked their bones clean. Growth as always is
the key imperative for companies.
“Companies are constantly searching for new ways of
creating higher profit and a larger market share. Growth seems to be
the most appropriate tactic for surviving economically in difficult
times. New instruments and methods as a support to a company’s growth
strategy can be essential in gaining a competitive advantage. Knowledge
management is one of the answers to this challenge. It can support
strategic goals such as the improvement of efficiency, the minimization
of risk and an increase in innovation, but also has inherent potentials
which have not been leveraged yet.” – Knowledge Networks
The frontiers of the physical world have
long been closing to expansion in the realms of territorial conquest
and exploitation of natural resources. The economic margins now lie
ripest in the knowledge economy, a term made most popular by the work
of Peter Drucker, wherein the utilization and creation of knowledge yield tangible economic returns.
Beyond
all original theory and proposition, the knowledge economy is now quite
perceptibly the global economy that the corporations ply their trades
in, and the world in which their workers see themselves living.
Added to this is the awesome aspect of growth and innovation powered by the network effect,
which creates new wealth out of materials not formerly recognized as
resources, simply through the force of people joining the global
network, and adding their actions to those of others.
One example of this is the social network Facebook, with a membership of 24 million people, which released an API
that allows developers to build widgets, gadgets and mashups, using
Facebook as a platform rather than a destination. This event sparked
activity analogous to the gold rushes and land rushes of earlier times.
“In less than a month, Facebook has attracted more
than 40,000 developers who have already created around 1,500
applications for the social networking platform. At the Facebook
Developer Meetup in New York last week, the mood was summed up by a
clean-cut young entrepreneur who had written “I NEED AN APP” in thick black marker on his name tag.” – FaceBook platform attracts 1,000 developers a day
This rush is fairly well controlled however:
Facebook is opening the environment up slowly, with plenty of
regulations to dampen excess or abuse. Technically for example, the use
of JavaScript is not allowed yet, because it’s seen as a potential
security compromise.
The Facebook network has been an
inaccessible seam now opened to mining. Now the potential value of 24
million people is beginning to be realized in nominal terms. Meanwhile
on the larger global network, there are over one billion effective
users.
The external rushes such as these shouldn’t obscure
the underlying principles of network enrichment. The freewheeling,
Darwinist proving grounds of the Internet are a useful place to observe
the dynamics of growth, and to note that the astronomical new wealth
being produced is real. These same phenomena are reproducible inside
the firewall. Companies are only just beginning to wake up to the
potential for creating new wealth on their own networks.
“The intranet has entered maturity as a primary
information tool. However its value as a productivity and collaboration
tool is not yet fully established, and its potential for creating
business value is far from being understood. Whereas 52% responded
‘absolutely’ on the first point, a mere 2% said the same for the last
point.” – Global Intranet Strategies Survey Results
More on this later this week.
