Book Description
Strategic intelligence (SI) has mostly been used in military settings, but its worth goes well beyond that limited role. It has become invaluable for improving any organization's strategic decision making process. The author of Strategic Intelligence: Business Intelligence, Competitive Intelligence, and Knowledge Management recognizes synergies among component pieces of strategic intelligence, and demonstrates how executives can best use this internal and external information toward making better decisions. Divided into two major parts, the book first discusses the convergence of knowledge management (KM), business intelligence (BI), and competitive intelligence (CI) into what the author defines as strategic intelligence. The second part of the volume describes case studies written by recognized experts in the fields of KM, BI, and CI. The case studies include strategic scenarios at Motorola, AARP, Northrop Grumman, and other market leaders. About the Editor Jay Liebowitz, D.Sc., is a full professor in the Graduate Division of Business and Management and program director for the Graduate Certificate in Competitive Intelligence at Johns Hopkins University. The first knowledge management officer at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, he also served as the Robert W. Deutsch Distinguished Professor of Information Systems at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, professor of Management Science at George Washington University, and Chaired Professor of Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the U.S. Army War College. A founder and chairperson of The World Congress on Expert Systems, he is a Fulbright Scholar, IEEE-USA Federal Communications Commission Executive Fellow, and Computer Educator of the Year (International Association for Computer Information Systems).
Average customer rating:
- "New economics of information" or new business of information?
- A knowledge economy classic
- Learn from the past & avoid being swept-away by E-commerce 2
- A valuable e-business classic - but lacks an epilogue
- Internet Hype
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Blown To Bits: How the New Economics of Information Transforms Strategy
Philip Evans
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ASIN: 087584877X |
Amazon.com
Philip Evans and Thomas S. Wurster think that the Internet can blow away practically any business, and in Blown to Bits, they examine how the new economy is "deconstructing" industries such as newspapers, auto retailing, and banking while creating new opportunities for others. They write that the "glue that holds today's value chains and supply chains together" is melting, and that even "the most stable of industries, the most focused of business models and the strongest of brands can be blown to bits by new information technology."
Evans and Wurster, both executives of the Boston Consulting Group, argue that the Internet demands new business strategies because it provides companies tremendous "reach" for customers without sacrificing "richness," or the quality of the information about products and services. The book shows how some businesses--Microsoft and Intuit in personal finance, Dell Computer in retailing, and the Automotive Network Exchange in manufacturing supply--are thriving amid a rapid expansion of connectivity and the widespread acceptance of new technical standards on the World Wide Web. Clearly written and tough-minded, Blown to Bits is required reading for business leaders, entrepreneurs, strategists, and others concerned about the new economics of the information age. --Dan Ring
Book Description
Richness or reach? The trade-off used to be simple but absolute: Your business strategy either could focus on "rich" information - customized products and services tailored to a niche audience - or could reach out to a larger market, but with watered-down information that sacrificed richness in favor of a broad, general appeal.
Much of business strategy as we know it today rests on this fundamental trade-off.
Now, say Evans and Wurster, the new economics of information is eliminating the trade-off between richness and reach, blowing apart the foundations of traditional business strategy.
Blown to Bits reveals how the spread of connectivity and common standards is redefining the information channels that link businesses with their customers, suppliers, and employees. Increasingly, your customers will have rich access to a universe of alternatives, your suppliers will exploit direct access to your customers, and your competitors will pick off the most profitable parts of your value chain. Your competitive advantage is up for grabs.
To prepare corporate executives and entrepreneurs alike for a fundamental change in business competition, Evans and Wurster expand and illuminate groundbreaking concepts first explored in the award-winning Harvard Business Review article "Strategy and the New Economics of Information," and present a practical guide for applying them. Examples span the spectrum of industries--from financial services to health care, from consumer to industrial goods, and from media to retailing.
Blown to Bits shows how to build new strategies that reflect a world in which richness and reach go hand in hand and how to make the most of the new forces shaping competitive advantage.
Download Description
The new economics of information is blowing apart the foundations of traditional business strategy. According to Blown to Bits, your business definition, industry definition, and competitive advantage are simultaneously up for grabs. Evans and Wurster argue that with the spread of connectivity and common standards, your customers will increasingly have rich access to a universe of alternatives, your suppliers will exploit direct access to your customers, and focused competitors will pick off the most profitable parts of your value chain. With an uncompromising clarity and vivid examples, Blown to Bits is targeted squarely at today's practicing business and corporate leaders. This groundbreaking book shows how to build new strategies that reflect the new economics of information, and explains how to take advantage of the forces shaping today's competitive advantage.
Customer Reviews:
"New economics of information" or new business of information?.......2007-01-29
"Blown to Bits" is a book about the "new economics of information technology" and its impact on businesses. The "morals" of the story include the fact that traditional business entities are increasingly being destroyed by newer and technology-based competitors. The destruction is happening because some old-style firms, after years of dominant positions in the market, have rested too comfortably on their laurels, unaware of emerging competition. Other firms are simply locked-in old technologies either because their investments are irreversible, or because changing old models of doing business may hurt stakeholders without guaranteeing future success.
The preceding statement suggests the difference between the "economics of information" and the "economics of things". Things and information are wed, but the marriage is fracturing, signaling an impending separation. The separation brings things and information is sharp competition, which increases the market value of information and tends to reduce the market value of things. The ensuing tradeoff between the quality of information (richness) and the quantity of information (reach) determines technical capability (production possibilities curve). However, with the value of information rising relative to the value of things, it becomes easy for "enablers" such as internet connectivity and standardized dissemination to shift the production possibilities frontier outward. The shift represents deconstruction defined as the "dismantling and reformulation of traditional business structures" (p. 39).
The flow of information in deconstructed enterprises is decentralized and orderly chaotic, rather than hierarchical. The benefit of deconstruction is the shifting out of the richness-reach tradeoff constraint; the corresponding cost is vulnerability and how to assess the level of vulnerability. Here the book does a good job of discussing possible outcomes, all of them indicating that deconstruction poses significant challenges for the incumbent.
As deconstruction succeeds, both richness and reach increase, which in turn permits disintermediation. So-called "navigators" replace traditional intermediaries which tend to reduce information, but with internet access and speedy information delivery, consumer surpluses rise. This is evident from the PC industry where consumers have gained as sales have shifted from the salesperson, to local superstores, to telephone orders, and now internet shopping.
Again with complete deconstruction competition comes to stand on three legs: richness and reach of information, and affiliation with consumers. Here dedicated communication lines replace old-style communication hierarchies. Intermediaries vanish and opportunities for outsourcing increase with all the pros and cons this implies. Moreover, once we change the supply chain, changing the organization is a natural consequence. The effect of organizational change on richness, reach, and affiliation has important implications for ownership, risk profile, control, as well as employment. Whether such implications are good or bad depends on the response of a business to organizational change. The author offers interesting concepts here like fluidity, flatness, and trust.
The book concludes with a brief chapter on what is needed to manage the deconstruction programs: new principles and new leadership.
This is clearly a creative effort - although it occasionally sounds preachy. Some examples like how Dell (the company maker) dealt with change are perfect; other examples like Silicon Valley may have been good during the dotcom years. By "new economics of information technology" the book really means "new business of information technology". If I am correct, it is easy to understand why the book does not mention groundbreaking work on the economics of information by Nobel Prize economists like Joseph Stiglitz, Michael Spence, and George Akerlof, even where it refers to information asymmetries. Regardless, I would still recommend this book.
Amavilah, Author
Modeling Determinants of Income in Embedded Economies
ISBN: 1600210465
A knowledge economy classic.......2006-01-27
Traditionally, companies have had to focus their information strategy on either richness or reach.
Richness is a measure of the quality of the information. Richness concerns six aspects of information:
· Bandwidth: how much information can be moved in a given time.
· Customization: the degree to which the information can be personalized.
· Interactivity: the level of exchange possible between groups of people based on the size of the group.
· Reliability: reliability of information decreases with an increase in the size of the group in which it is exchanged.
· Security: a measure of the sensitivity of the information.
· Currency: a measure of how up-to-date the information is.
Reach is the number of people exchanging information. In traditional business, companies have had to compromise, sacrificing richness for reach, or reach for richness. However, the advent of the Internet, say the authors, has blown this traditional understanding of managing information to bits.
The compromises and trade-offs that existing companies have had to make between richness and reach, make them vulnerable to new competitors who are able to utilize the internet to step entirely outside of the richness/reach dichotomy. Until recently it has been impossible to share very rich information with as many people as one likes. The Internet has radically altered this equation. The consequences of unbundling information from its carrier, however, can be devastating for existing industries. The authors call this process Deconstruction. They outline four steps to understanding how deconstruction will play out in a particular industry:
1. Examine how informational economics shape your industry.
2. Consider how new technologies can shift those existing structures.
3. Analyze how the various players in the business system could create economic value as a consequence of those changes.
4. Lead the transition from the old business to the new one.
Learn from the past & avoid being swept-away by E-commerce 2.......2005-04-06
Although tempered by the DotCom bust, information technology is still very real and continues to shake up industry after industry, and an untold number of companies are being swept-away by the resulting riptides. Clearly written and tough-minded, Blown to Bits is required reading for entrepreneurs, and others wanting to transform their companies before it's too late.
Chapter 1: A Cautionary Tale
Chapter 2: Information and Things
Chapter 3: Richness and Reach
Chapter 4: Deconstruction
Chapter 5: Disintermediation
Chapter 6: Competing on Reach
Chapter 7: Competing on Affiliation
Chapter 8: Competing on Richness
Chapter 9: Deconstructing Supply Chains
Chapter 10: Deconstructing the Organization
Chapter 11: Monday Morning
Opportunities are everywhere. The problem is transforming ideas into reality. Blown to Bits is a hard-hitting book that will definitely open your eyes. The New Economy is literally pushing aside old line companies in favor of dynamic, new enterprises. Everyone aspiring to be an entrepreneur should read this book or risk climbing the wrong mountain.
Michael Davis, Editor - Byvation
A valuable e-business classic - but lacks an epilogue.......2004-08-31
This book is an important e-business classic. But despite the authors' clever recommendations, an epilogue is missing, as the Internet revolution they announced did not materialise. The Internet EVOLUTION, however, lives on.
Blown to Bits is about the consequences of the Internet for businesses.
The most important conclusion in the book is that the combination of increased bandwidth, global interconnected electronic network, faster computers and open standards are abolishing the requirements up to now of balancing information reach with information richness.
One example is the alternative media that a company can select when potential customers are targeted. Newspaper ads can reach a broad audience with a limited and static message. At the other end of the scale, a personal meeting with the customer gives the opportunity for deep, detailed and interactive information.
Businesses' supply chains include the same balancing act. When firms do business, the number of partners is inversely correlated to the richness in the information of the interchange.
The Internet removes this balancing act because you suddenly can reach many partners without compromising on the level of detail and complexity of the information (vast reach AND vast richness).
According to the authors, the consequence is that the value chain is blown to bits. They call it deconstruction, which happens when the things economy increasingly is separated from the information economy. "Information is the kit that binds the value chains and supply chains". But the kit is eroding. Information is no longer embedded in the physical units. The economy for physical things and the economy for information are fundamentally different. Unlike physical assets, information (an idea, illustration, checklist, article, etc.) can be reproduced costless infinitely. And where things are worn out, information remains their original form.
Blown to bits contains a wealth of well-described cases like newspapers, banks, car dealers, stock brokers, computer hardware and last not least Encyclopaedia Britannica. In addition, the book includes many interesting text boxes with questions the reader can use for further consideration.
In the bright light of hindsight!
Blown to bits was published in the roaring heydays of the dot-com wave ... and it shows. In 2001, two years after Blown to bits was published, the authors admitted their mistakes in an article for their employer, Boston Consulting Group. They summarised the evolution:
1) It is increasingly clear that the new economy is not displacing the old one. Instead the old is in the process of transforming itself from within.
2) The Internet is NOT proving to be a disruptive technology (i.e. characterised by eliminating the advantages for existing market players). Instead, incumbents are using it to challenge their own business models.
3) Information does not, in general, "want to be free"; instead, intellectual property rights are being extended.
This does not imply that the Internet won't change a lot. Nor can we all can return safely to the good old ways of doing business. Rather, it means that all incumbents have got a second chance to get e-business right.
This conclusion concurs with the view of strategy professor Michael Porter (quoted August 2001 in Business Week)
"We need to see the Internet as complementary to other things the company does rather than contradictory or cannibalistic. That was a really fundamental mistake that many people made. They assumed that this was a disruptive technology that existing companies could not embrace as efficiently as a new company coming in with a clean sheet of paper.
And Porter concludes: "The Internet as a family of technologies will have a very powerful effect on operational effectiveness. We'll see deeper integration among service, sales, logistics, manufacturing, and suppliers."
Peter Leerskov,
MSc in International Business (Marketing & Management) and Graduate Diploma in E-business
Internet Hype.......2003-12-10
The authors must be embarrassed. But they are probably too busy on their next bogus book full of more mananagement consulting buzzspeak and claptrap.
"Blown to Bits"?--perhaps they were referring to the bursting of the Internet bubble??
Product Description
Enterprise Content Management Methods reviews the most effective methods for many types of deployment scenarios - from a single deployment to a complex online marketplace. The book also examines the cultural change that occurs when an enterprise deploys an ECM application, and the change management principles that ensure a smooth transition and help employees embrace a new way of doing their jobs. Enterprise Content Management Methods provides multiple examples of how ECM is applied in the real business world within many industries, and of how organizations have streamlined their operations and realized return on investment as a result. A must-read for executives interesting in managing content to achieve compliance, improve productivity, and foster innovation and future growth.
Book Description
* Concepts are presented in clear, non-technical jargon.
* Presents proven strategies for integrating IT with business strategies to create competitive advantages for organizations.
* Current readings and Web links bring basic issues up to date with examples of how successful managers implement IT.
Customer Reviews:
Buying Books.......2005-08-18
The service is excellent and the product was in good condition and in time.
Sunil
Good Choice.......2002-01-16
I chose to recommend this book to my undergraduate students taking my "Managing Information Technology" course. My colleagues and I have found that most MIS books focus more on the components of information systems or on their strategic use - and they miss the middle (management) ground entirely.
"Managing and Using IS" covers the basics only in brief. It then devotes itself to key, mid-level, management issues most important for understanding the IS organization, its components, and associated issues. This book goes into greater detail than other MIS books.
This is a basic book and quite an asset to students struggling to learn about IS organizations and their management. Unfortunately, it is grossly overpriced. At this writing, I am tempted to simply modify the book's topic outline and allow my students to conduct their own research into these issues. Such an approach would foster some really interesting classroom discussions, build valuable research skills...
If you'd rather spend the money and have the static information handed to you, then this book will not disappoint.
Product Description
Enterprise Content Management Solutions explores how corporate enterprises are applying ECM as a key element of their business strategy to gain competitive advantage while introducing ways to increase Return on Investment, as well as the emerging importance of Complaince and Corporate Governance. This book also examines the use of ECM technology as applied in specific functional departments within an organization, and how ECM is applied in the real business world as driven by requirements that are specific to an industry segment. The scope is further expanded and considers the highest impact of ECM technology deployment - within multiple industries. A must-read for executives interested in managing content to achieve compliance, improve productivity, and fost innovation and future growth.
Average customer rating:
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Strategic Knowledge Management Technology
Manufacturer: Idea Group Publishing
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ASIN: 1591403367
Release Date: 2005-03-22 |
Book Description
Strategic Knowledge Management Technology applies the knowledge-based view of the firm, which builds on the resource-based theory. The value shop is identified as the typical value configuration for knowledge firms. This book applies a stages of growth model for knowledge management technology, where firms develop from the person-to-tools strategy, via the person-to-person strategy and the person-to-documents strategy, to the person-to-systems strategy. The case of law firms is extensively explored. IS/IT strategy for knowledge management is developed within the framework of the Y model.
Average customer rating:
- Excellent in both style and substance
- A rigorous conceptualization
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Super-Flexibility for Knowledge Enterprises
Homa Bahrami , and
Stuart Evans
Manufacturer: Springer
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ASIN: 3540205764 |
Book Description
Business enterprises are transforming their core practices in the digital age. The emerging imperative is to become super-flexible, in order to thrive, or, at least survive, in volatile environments. Super-flexibility refers to the ability to be agile and versatile, like an entrepreneurial company, coupled with the capacity to remain robust and resilient, much like an established company. Super-flexible enterprises move swiftly, manage for the moment, and ride successive waves of technological innovation, while providing a few enduring anchors of stability and cohesion.
This book details how knowledge enterprises can harness uncertainty by becoming super-flexible. Based on over 20 years of practical experience in Silicon Valley, the authors present conceptual frameworks, illustrative examples and practical lessons for strategizing, organizing and managing knowledge-based enterprises in turbulent settings.
Features
* Combines theoretical concepts with practical lessons
* Addresses the challenges facing the new generation of entrepreneurial, knowledge-based companies
* Details how established enterprises can learn from Silicon Valley in order to adapt to new realities and how they can harness emerging opportunities
* Distills 20 years of field research and practical experience with a diverse range of tech companies in Silicon Valley.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent in both style and substance.......2005-05-17
This is a crisply written, elegant book that analyses and describes the practices of silicon valley in a way that is at once readable, informative, and inspirational. In less than 200 pages, the authors describe (with entertaining and instructive examples interspersed) the silicon valley ecosystem. This ecosystem has been resiliant through the ups and downs of the past 20 years, and has been the engine behind the productivity of the US economy.
It is said that if you really know your stuff, you can describe it simply and clearly. Bahrami and Evans know their stuff. They have lived and breathed with the creators of silicon valley for 20+ years, and the book is peppered with insights and personal anecdotes, and quotes from personal conversations with some of the legends of silicon valley.
This is a book that would be equally applicable to the academic, the educator, and the entrepreneur. This is a must read for communities outside silicon valley that have wrestled over how to create entrepreneurial energy in their midst (European and Asian governments come to mind). The formula for success is spelled out (though how to get there is less clear).
I found the book to be particularly good at surfacing broadly applicable principles. The phrase they coin, super-flexibility, is expressive and right-on. The impressive bibliography shows they have done their homework.
This book is a good read: well-written, fast paced, analytical and anecdotally rich. It fills a real need. Though I have lived in silicon valley for almost 3 decades, I learned a lot by reading it, and would recommend it broadly.
A rigorous conceptualization.......2004-12-23
This is a mind-blowing book, bulit on the authors 20-years experience. I would recommend this book to those with a research orientation. Read it, and u will find it really offers an integrated view of flexibility better than any one else. The only drawback lies with weak applications of managerial mechanisms.
Book Description
Discover how to implement an effective IT governance structure for the long-term success of an extended enterprise
IT is no longer an enabler of corporate strategy, it is now the key element of corporate strategy. Governance of the Extended Enterprise explores how some of the world's most successful enterprises have integrated information technology with business strategies, culture, and ethics to optimize information value, attain business objectives, and capitalize on technologies in highly competitive environments.
Providing a process for change and a governance model, Governance of the Extended Enterprise encompasses the latest emerging practices from major information and knowledge businesses, providing a major new knowledge resource for enterprises. It also opens up new avenues of practice in strategy setting, enterprise management, control assessment, and risk management.
From sales-force automation to workgroup collaboration, forms processing to knowledge management systems, customer service to technical support, Governance of the Extended Enterprise will help readers improve IT governance in all facets of their organization.
Download Description
Globalization and worldwide communications have overridden national boundaries. In many markets, the effect of global financial interdependence (governmental, political, and business) is now so interconnected that they must be considered with almost any decision being made. Governance in the Extended Enterprise shows how successful enterprises have integrated information technology and business strategies, culture, and ethics in order to optimize information value, attain business objectives, and capitalize on technologies even in highly competitive environments.
Average customer rating:
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Executive Strategy: Strategic Management and Information Technology
Frederick Betz
Manufacturer: Wiley
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ASIN: 047138402X |
Book Description
A modern theory of executive strategy for the information age
The information revolution has radically transformed virtually every aspect of business today. Yet, no book has fully addressed its impact on strategic management-until now. In
Executive Strategy: Strategic Management and Information Technology, Frederick Betz builds on his pioneering work concerning the management of technical innovation to explore the powerful relationship between traditional strategic management and today's computer and communications technologies.
By adapting established strategy-related concepts and processes to the strategic management challenges faced by companies in the information age, this book offers readers the background they need to guide processes ranging from the creation of strategic business models and the development of comprehensive planning scenarios to the strategic management of business diversification and the formulation of information strategy.
Concepts are developed with a survey of the older business literature on strategy and the newer information strategy literature, and illustrated by a wealth of new technology and e-commerce-related case studies. The case studies, presented in the book and on its accompanying Web site (www.execstrat.com), are drawn from leading companies such as Apple Computer, Pixar, AOL Time Warner, and Amazon.com.
From the Internet and e-commerce to the role of computer-aided tools such as inventory control and project management software, the world of information technology is filled with innovations that have crucial ramifications for the strategic management of every business. This book equips present and future engineering and business professionals with the road map they need to help steer the modern organization skillfully through the twists and turns of this new and exciting business landscape.
Average customer rating:
- A KaosPilot must-read
- This books goes beyond technology in addressing KM issues!
- A Tour de Force on the knowledge revolution
- Praise from a Knowledge Management Practitioner
- Tedious recapitulation of the obvious
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Smart Business: How Knowledge Communities Can Revolutionize Your Company
Jim Botkin
Manufacturer: Free Press
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ASIN: 0684850249 |
Book Description
Knowledge is most productive when it is shared by all. This simple but profound insight, long accepted in the academic, scientific, and medical communities, is about to radically transform business. Our economy has become inundated with information, yet often businesses are unable to use and exploit it. How can managers organize their workplaces to effectively exchange, expand, and exploit knowledge?
Dr. Jim Botkin, one of the world's leading knowledge consultants, sees a tidal wave of information swamping the old ways of doing business. The knowledge economy, he argues, is not just for Silicon Valley startups; it touches every company, in every industry. We ignore Dr. Botkin's experience at our peril; the new breakneck speed of change demands that we all capture and capitalize on knowledge, or die. As he puts it, "You better not be in the same business five or ten years from now that you are in today."
Smart Business is the first knowledge-age book to give practical advice on how to organize and make use of knowledge -- how to turn knowledge into wisdom. Botkin argues that we must build "knowledge communities" -- groups of people with a shared passion to create, use, and share new knowledge for tangible business purposes. When we do, we will experience a transformation that powers our business and inspires new models of networked management.
Botkin draws on the experiences of dozens of companies -- and includes testimonials in an appendix from managers at such organizations as Xerox, Marriott, Saturn, and Los Alamos labs. He shows how AT&T formed six knowledge communities in order to radically transform their selling strategy. How the postal service of Sweden transformed itself from the oldest state monopoly to one of the largest successful private companies in Scandinavia. How Motorola is using knowledge to transform its legendary Motorola University from classroom curriculum to catalyst for change.
With examples like these, and practical advice on how every organization can benefit from knowledge communities, Smart Business is the knowledge book for the new millennium.
Customer Reviews:
A KaosPilot must-read.......1999-07-18
At The KaosPilot University we do not believe in lists with required reading since this would deprive the students of the opportunity to take responsibility for their own learning - learning how to learn - but SMART BUSINESS by Dr. Jim Botkin is the exception which confirms that rule. The new dividing line is between the ones who know and the ones who do not know how to capture, share and leverage knowledge.
Smart Business is the pragmatic new economy manifesto we have been waiting for and a 'must-read' for anyone who want to keep making a difference when the rules of business is changing.
Thanx! -- Erik Wingren, Aggressive Learner
This books goes beyond technology in addressing KM issues!.......1999-06-18
In today's hyper-linked, blurred world, it's not surprising that the KM field is overflowing with books and papers, each touting the "best" solution. So why should you read this book?
What Jim Botkin realizes and communicates in this excellent book is that there is no single "best" KM solution. Rather, Smart Business clearly tells the story that only a holistic approach can address the real KM issues companies face.
Instead of advocating a specific KM technology or process,he provides numerous examples of how real companies are dealing with the significant cultural, as well as the technological, issues around KM. Together, these examples paint an impressionistic picture of what it takes to be at the forefront of successful KM.
What these companies have found out, and what Jim reports back, is that KM is more about constructing a community rather than installing a piece of software or hardware. And building communities is not something that can easily be reduced to a series of steps or processes. Communities arise from shared experiences. And if telling stories is one of the best ways to share an experience, then by the time the reader has finished, they will have experienced a bit of what it's like to be inside a KM leader.
What's exciting about Smart Business is that the stories are not filtered through Jim. Instead the reader hears them "first hand" directly from the company. You read about how Xerox made the transition from the document company to a knowledge company from Priscilla Douglas of Xerox's Public Sector area. Helena Light Hadley, Director of Marriott's New Business Ventures, tells you how they use KM to assure high levels of customer service in an industry with traditionally high turn-over rates.
So if you're looking to go beyond technology and into the fundamental cultural issues in KM, Jim Botkin's Smart Business is a great story to hear!
A Tour de Force on the knowledge revolution.......1999-06-17
Dr. Jim has done it again. The author of the best selling, Monster Under the Bed, has given us the most concise and authoritative work yet on knowlege: its management; communities; and the new knowledge business.
The book breaks new ground and also summarizes where we are in the whirlwind of knowledge as it rips through the entire global economy. It incorporates a number of insightful case studies from real companies around the world on how they are coping with this new phenomena.
The real value to readers, initiated and novice, is how organizations, through knowledge communities, can transform themselves, even in legacy companies. These are powerful ideas, stories and concepts that together create a whole new way of doing business-- SMART BUSINESS.
I loved the analogy to bees and the clever artwork. Nature itself can teach us many lessons if only we had the patience to learn. You can learn a great deal from this book. "Dell or be Delled", as the saying now goes. This book is a manifesto for the emerging fast company. Read it and move into the future. Disregard it at your own peril!
Praise from a Knowledge Management Practitioner.......1999-06-17
If you are "doing" knowledge management and it's not working, read Jim Botkin's book. If you want to build a knowledge management system, read the book. If your CEO doesn't "get" knowledge management, have him or her read this book. It is a very cogent presentation of the business case for knowledge management, and for those who want to learn, a great KM primer. AND there's a new and valuable framework for success, which is the knowledge community. Without it or them, you're wasting your time. It is an intelligent and fun book, loaded with great examples and personal stories.
Tedious recapitulation of the obvious.......1999-06-10
How many cliches can a consultant craft into a single disjointed book? Too many. The examples are tired; the insights are obvious, and the conclusions familiar. Save your time and money.
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