Book Review: The Knowledge Entrepreneur

KM Measurements (K6226)

Aye Aye Sanda Htun

G1101780E 22 February 2012

The availability and accessibility of the information has dramatically changed the way of mankind in such a way that processing and scanning has become part of daily work nowadays. However, it means that quality and relevancy of the information is inversely affected by sheer volume and traceability of source of origin. It translates into opportunity where individuals can provide services in the area of managing information and knowledge, the work of knowledge entrepreneurs. The practical use of information and knowledge collected in a corporation is the source of revenue generation. Commercialization of such knowledge is the only true competitiveness of a corporation in todays business world. By doing analysis of gap for set goals and crucial success factors, individual entrepreneurs or the team can identify the missing ingredients and rectify the situation. Companies these years are well aware of the importance of knowledge and many have been actively giving attention to the area of Knowledge Management. That alone cannot necessarily be translated into success of the system for requirement of users are vary and application of knowledge is conditional where the need of input is ever changing. There have been many situations where company restructuring is done at the expense of invaluable knowledge expertise. The impact of such is not visible until facing sudden change in circumstances. Even technology poses the thread of knowledge lost. It is a great chance for entrepreneurs to find the cracks in the system and offer solution to retain and capture in depth knowledge and exploit intellectual capital for greater growth (Coulson-Thomas 2003, Pg 32). The realization of true potential of intellectual capital is the only way to increase the shareholder value which investors are looking for in accessing the sustainability of a company. It is where implementation of knowledge frame work matters where all kinds of relevant knowledge, which has been captured and stored, ready to be exploited for better productivity and performance (Coulson-Thomas 2003, Pg 32). The most essential part of it is to integrate individual knowledge islands and transform it to be more competitive. Knowledge repositories are required to be updated regularly and, thus, increase in continuous relevancy adds more value in delivering knowledge to users. The primary goal of knowledge creating is to use constant input of information and knowledge to create new intellectual capital. A good framework encourages and provides opportunities to individuals where learning occurs and subsequently leads to breakthroughs. In addition, it can facilitate new recruits to perform on par as experienced with the right support tools. Knowledge entrepreneurs can serve as an independent body to create policies aiming to have successful strategy in integration, differentiation and more resourceful use of knowledge available inside and outside of the organization. The capability of harnessing intellectual capital, system, human and infrastructure, to its ultimate level is integral of engaging knowledge entrepreneurs.
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The pursuit of knowledge management due to overwhelming volume of information has often somewhat obscure and the end result of implementation is towards straight forward tasks instead of learning. Application of generalised answer for sophisticated issues will create unbalancing performance result as well as focusing on multi-tasking of staff to get higher flexibility. The implications of uncertainty and ever changing environmental factors are other challenges that management has to face. The way of finding solution to these has to focus on organizations ability to create, share and improve knowledge within itself. Knowledge entrepreneurs role is to identify what factors are useful inputs for management to focus on in reengineering process. Knowledge by itself is not meaningful unless it is creatively applied for unique circumstances by its users. Stake holders of knowledge economy are more informed and well aware of their influence on organization. Managing the expectation is not enough to excel is not a viable option anymore. Close collaboration and communication with stakeholders is an essential part to sustain its own place while building intellectual capital is the only mean to distinct itself from competitions. All these important factors are for management agenda. Necessity for better quality and continuous improvement of performance is what board wants to see at the end. The sole objective of improvement makes board focus on tangible quantitative measure where reflection, understanding and creation of new knowledge are left in the dark due to its semantic nature. However, successful board should listen to knowledge entrepreneurs and put up more effort in creation of environment and nature culture to upgrade competencies and capabilities. Board should give a lead in driving towards learning organization with more emphasis on knowledge entrepreneurship at individual, team and corporate level. The whole picture of where the organization is moving has to be signalled clearly by the board. Participating in a knowledge marketplace means new opportunities ready to be exploited. The origin of intellectual is of little to no important to its relevance. As such, individuals with special expertise will prefer to work with an employer rather than for him. Today technology and internet have created e-commerce, a commercialization option, that no other generation ever got before. The ability to balance life, finding self-fulfilment and succeed in entrepreneurship is the transition that corporations in these days are facing. It can be taken advantage of with collaboration of mutual benefits. Diversity is what knowledge entrepreneurship can offer in the partnership, a strength to serve customer uniquely. However, companies have to be more ready to embrace the perceptive of entrepreneurship, be it from inside or outside.

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Entrepreneurship enables freedom in operation of how individual receive, process, create, share and apply knowledge. Companies which are well aware of the happenings and trend encourage which allows entrepreneurship spirit in the company to create new venture or value. However, realization of such ideal has its own complication in terms of individual capabilities, self-interest and values. Thus, there will be issues to be addressed though a thorough consideration is needed for more significant ones by the management. Nonetheless, the ability to facilitate creation of new knowledge, value added services will prevail and individual or team entrepreneurs will definitely support creating of future earnings. While going for cost reduction route, companies should be more attentive to the commercial activities of function that will be outsourced. Such decisions should not have made at the cost of future opportunities. Even when support tools are introduced, priority consideration should be given to individual performance of key personnel on top of corporate profitability as the main objective of implementation is to capture and share best practices, in terms of product knowledge and support functions, to get higher sales winning rate, time spent in each step of support functions and, above all, error rate. Opportunity should be given to review the existing system to up-skill the knowledge worker with more efficient approach. Entrepreneurs can identify gap and advice company executives who are overloaded with voluminous information inputs. The capabilities and attributes of a knowledge entrepreneur is inevitably high due to the dynamic nature of market situation and demand of high reflection, understanding and analysis of knowledge. This is the key characteristic which differentiates entrepreneurs from staff with knowledge management responsibilities. Entrepreneurs are taking more proactive role in exploiting know-how than others. They have to be well rounded professional who not only are experts in technologies but also in interpersonal skills, much like consultants. Entrepreneurs who wish to start their own journey have to be aware of their own passion, value and way to make a living with their interest. Finding corporate partners to work together with is another challenging part of financing and operating business successfully. Corporations can also be part of entrepreneurship development to have other source of earning from new ventures or take advantage of past relationship with ex-employees to retain expertise that walk out of the door. In this aspect entrepreneurship will become mutual benefits while promoting competitiveness and sustaining business profitability. There are suggestions of how to look for opportunities and kind of services that might be suitable for knowledge-based companies. The best one is where entrepreneur to go through a list of strategic opportunities, critical success factors, of a company
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(Coulson-Thomas 2003, Pg 14). It is more like doing knowledge audit to determine what company does not know or overlooked for its knowledge management. Knowledge is in everything that corporate does. It is huge and existed with overwhelming quantity in any organization. However, entrepreneur has to carefully identify what knowledge is beneficial to exploit and what is not. Formulating of knowledge management strategy is not only to capture and reuse information and knowledge but also to create new value which will propel corporation to the next level. According to Colin, most companies tend to engage information technology in higher place and taking skill upgrade training as improvement to intellectual capital. It is much in agreement with fundamentals of knowledge management except that author gave higher focus in reflective thinking of individuals as true know-how exploit. Companies are giving higher priorities to adapt with the changes in the environment in which they operate. Added to the traditional cost reduction, more and more specialists and experts are walking out of the door without being noticed. It is the best to do knowledge transfer prior to the departure. Companies have to adopt succession planning where knowledge is transferred based on its characteristics, like Nancy Dixons transfer model. It would have been much better if the author discussed about at least one transfer method with real life example. Otherwise, company can also keep older version of knowledge map so as to trace whose expertise is what and how to contact when in need. It is a well known fact that most of the organizations in transaction have very poor or less understanding of what managing knowledge can offer. Visible and tangible measurements are what corporate directors can comprehend. There is no alternative to go around it unless entrepreneur himself is the owner or a member of the board. One way to go around though is putting measurement, KPI, tagged with Knowledge management strategy deliverables. Performance measurement of individual can be review so that knowledge creation, sharing and application have fully integrated in due course. While the effort of creating environment favourable to entrepreneurship, it is the responsibility of knowledge management team that proper framework is in place with the culture, adapt to it or transform it, with full support from the Board. It was not clearly explained how to dealt with culture change when the resistance comes from within. Colin mentioned what benefits a company can expect from capability building of individuals in the company and make them inspired as entrepreneurs. It should be able to materialize with job support tools and give staff enough time to reflect upon their interest and learning, like 3Ms 15% rule. However, knowledge management
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team has to conduct internal assessment if such is require for everyone or just key personnel. The virtue of entrepreneurship has been well known in business world. However creating it the context of organizational culture is not something that is easily attainable. There are other culture values that have to be taken into accounts, such as westerner perspective of embracing it is totally different from Asian. It is something that has to tackle at not just organizational level but at community or national level. All in all, the venture capital opportunity of specialist or experts is definitely an area which has high potential to become an entrepreneur in todays economy if individuals have business acumen to pursue it.

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