Success As A Knowledge Economy

The only sustainable advantage in our hypercompetitive marketplace is the ability to learn and adapt faster than everyone else. Companies that cling to management practices of a bygone era continue to fade away. They desperately need managers who empower people to seek out learning at a moment’s notice. Minds at Work can help you be that manager. This book captures the role managers play in the knowledge economy—where uninhibited, on-demand learning inspires employees to achieve higher levels of performance. Authors David Grebow and Stephen J. Gill describe how managers can move from a traditional “command and control” position to become advocates of communication and collaboration. They share what happens when managers help their direct reports grow as people and use technology to pull the learning they need when they need it. Minds at Work illustrates this shift to a learning community with success stories from forward-looking companies. With this better way to manage, these companies have unearthed those “aha!” moments as the dots connect after continuous problem solving, trial and error, and innovation. Each has redefined norms, made knowledge sharing flat, and created a workplace culture built to last. Use this book to embrace learning anytime, anywhere. Nurture the minds at work, and you’ll win the hearts of your organization.

Dated May 2016. Print and web pdfs available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications Web ISBN=9781474132862

Revolutionary account of the transformative potential of the knowledge economy Adam Smith and Karl Marx recognized that the best way to understand the economy is to study the most advanced practice of production. Today that practice is no longer conventional manufacturing: it is the radically innovative vanguard known as the knowledge economy. In every part of the production system it remains a fringe excluding the vast majority of workers and businesses. This book explores the hidden nature of the knowledge economy and its possible futures. The confinement of the knowledge economy to these insular vanguards has become a driver of economic stagnation and inequality throughout the world. Traditional mass production has stopped working as a shortcut to economic growth. But the alternative—a deepened and socially inclusive form of the knowledge economy—continues to lie beyond reach in even the richest countries. The shape of contemporary politics on both the left and the right reflects a failure to come to terms with this dilemma and to overcome it. Unger explains the knowledge economy in the truncated and confined form that it has today and proposes the way to a knowledge economy for the many: changes not just in economic institutions but also in education, culture, and politics. Just as Smith and Marx did in their time, he uses an understanding of the most advanced practice of production to rethink both economics and the economy as a whole.

Knowledge is fueling economic growth and social development in every region of the world. This book showcases the Finnish experience in the 1990s as an example of how knowledge can become the driving force in economic transformation and growth.

Knowledge has in recent years become a key driver for growth of regions and nations. This volume empirically investigates the emergence of the knowledge economy in the late 20th century from a regional point of view. It first deals with the theoretical background for understanding the knowledge economy, with knowledge spillovers and development externalities. It then examines aspects of the relationship between knowledge inputs and innovative outputs in the information, computer and telecommunications sector (ICT) of the economy at the regional level. Case studies focusing on a wide variety of sectors, countries and regions finally illustrate important regional innovation issues.

A new collection in the IAU Issues in Higher Education Series that deals with the major tensions between education and science. Drawing on experiences from a range of countries and regions, the book demonstrates the need to find new avenues for the management of knowledge production to ensure that it can meet increasingly global goals and demands.