مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

Business leaders are facing whole new set of management challenges. Increasing uncertainty and environmental changes (e.g., global economic stagnation, terrorism, Brexit) must be dealt with to maintain competitive advantage, but the widely known and practiced techniques for leveraging physical and financial resources are no longer sufficient. Rather, innovation, flexibility, responsiveness, and the creative redefinition of markets and opportunities represent the new sources of competitive advantage.

The globalization and the rapid diffusion of information and communications technologies have transformed the economies of the developed world. Citing a 1997 OECD study, The Economist pointed out that ‘‘more than half of the total GDP in the rich economies is now knowledge-based, including industries such as telecommunications, computers, software, pharmaceuticals, education and entertainment. High tech industries have nearly doubled their share of manufacturing output over the past two decades, to around 25%, and knowledge-intensive services are growing even faster . . . knowledge workers . . . from brain surgeons to journalists . . . account for eight out of ten new jobs.’’ As noted in a recent Fortune article, many of today’s best-performing companies — Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook — use little financial and physical capital for their size. Some, such as Uber and Airbnb, use practically none. As the McKinsey Global Institute recently observed, ‘‘The most profitable industries . . . are asset-light in terms of physical capital.

As the focus shifts to the more effective utilization of a firm’s knowledge-based capital, new approaches and techniques have been proposed by strategists and management scholars. Leadership often takes center stage in this discussion, but while more capable leadership at the top — smarter managers — may be necessary, it cannot be a sufficient condition. Competing in an environment of increasing uncertainty and rapidly changing technologies requires that firms rely on the knowledge, skills, and experience of all of their people by creating a learning organization.