Sustaining the ecology of knowledge

✍ Scribed by John Seely Brown

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Weight: 908 KB
• Volume: 1999
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1087-8149
• DOI: 10.1002/ltl.40619991207

✦ Synopsis

conomic and social wealth in the New Economy increasingly depend on rapid knowledge creation. Organizations that create value through new products, E services, and ideas will prosper. Those that fail to build the intellectual capacicy and personal engagement of their members will stagnate. The generation of new knowledg, largely based on digital technology, is driving three hndamental shik in the economy, each of which poses strategic challenges for leaders.

From conglomeration to demassification. Most products and services-as well as markets and entire societies-are breaking into smaller, more specialized units. In the realm of products, Moore's Law-which says that the power of integrated circuits doubles every 18 months-now applies to goods in all fields. Because integrated circuits are omnipresent, the distinction between low-tech and high-tech products is limy at best. The performance of almost all products, including cars (which today may need an occasional s o h r e tune-up), medical equipment, home appliances, and industrial goods, is improving at breakneck speed-far faster than those products have traditionally evolved. And despite the recent wave of merger-mania, demassification as0 applies to organizations, which are outsourcing more and more of their work and which increasingly must tailor their products and services to individual tastes. Likewise, in families, schools, and communities, for better or for worse, hgmentation is becoming the norm. Power in the New Economy is s m n g to the smallest possible unit.