Unleashing knowledge forces

In a strange confluence of thinking, my wife Uma and I converged on one thing that knowledge forces affect organizations in every stage of their life cycle. The use of the knowledge force has an important role in shaping individual and organizational thinking and actions. Our forthcoming McGraw-Hill book explores various dimensions of this force that has already led many organizations to dominate their chosen segments, and will probably play a role in the success or failure of many more firms.

Because of constantly evolving technology and dynamic customer requirements, the focus is on creating this knowledge force. And, once organizations learn how to generate and exploit firm level knowledge force, they start experiencing the impact. The impact is experienced through the business outcomes of growth, expansion, and acquisition of new customers and markets. In the early stages of the growth of the organization, knowledge force creates a direct and indirect impact in steering the organization strategy. But, as the organization grows, knowledge force is subsumed by the larger whole and it becomes more important to manage the processes around knowledge, and map the different stages of its evolution aligned with the business growth. This is when a focused effort on sustaining a knowledge management environment helps a corporation to move through the stages of knowledge initiation to true knowledge action and finally maturity.

Today, the focus is on creating knowledge force, because technology is constantly evolving, and customer requirements keep changing

Don Tapscott, author of The Digital Economy, in his latest book titled "Wikinomics" points out, "Ordinary people and firms are linking up in imaginative new ways to drive innovation and success". In recent years, we have all heard of medical professionals putting out problems on the Web to get best advice from practitioners from any corner of the world. But, when you bring a researchers new option to the board room, the challenge of no organization recipe being sacrosanct, and every idea within the four walls of the firm being challenged by somebody sitting anonymously and providing collaborative suggestions to business problems, are something that will have to be understood and embraced by all of us.

So, what is the link? We have always known of knowledge management as the next avatar of information management. This knowledge is harnessed through tools, technologies, an enabling organization culture, and leadership focus to provide rich rewards at the firm level. The emergence of Web 2.0 and the resultant morphing of the Internet into an interactive collaboration medium have now provided knowledge seekers to reach out beyond the physical limitations of their own context to enable knowledge to be tapped anywhere in the world. Today, the possibilities for entrepreneurial firms to explore the knowledge of like-minded individuals and communities push the envelope of knowledge management further that we have ever thought possible.

Ours is still an evolving industry. While processes may be maturing within the firm, the understanding of customer processes and needs is still immature. Extending the knowledge management boundaries through global collaboration can surely help to level the playing field and help clairvoyant firms to punch above their weight and succeed in the global services market.

The author is deputy chairman & MD of Zensar Technologies and the vice chairman of Nasscom.