Knowledge Creation

The role of KM when it comes to innovation

The role of KM when it comes to innovation
Bild erstellt mit Microsoft Copilot

Last week I attended a really inspiring talk held by Patrick Cohendet (HEC Montreal), organized by the Research Network of the KMGN: Knowledge Based Approaches to The Firm: An Idea-Driven Perspective.

What I really liked and what was an excellent food for thought was the conception of Knowledge Management as a bridging funtion between the Generating of (many) Ideas and the Innovation Management. Knowledge Management facilitates the evaluation and filtering of ideas by ensuring that during this process relevant knowledge is available and efficiently used:
„[…] an idea needs to be equipped with various bodies of knowledge in order to become commercially viable. After the initial spark, the “social and cognitive construction of the idea” phase becomes crucial in the ideation journey. The goal is to provide the idea with enough knowledge to form an internally consistent set of concepts and ultimately make it commercially viable.“ (Patrick Cohendet)

So, the question is not – as often asked for in organizations – to clearly distinguish between KM on the one and Innovation Management on the other side. On the contrary, KM is at the very basis and an essential prerequisite for a successful Innovation Management, isn’t it? Always felt, now well explained. Thank you, Patrick!

What diving has to do with the SECI model

In one of my university courses the students are asked to produce a short video on a core concept of knowledge management. Alisa Ruths chose the SECI model and created a wonderful video explanation…which was retrieved on the internet by a huge international company that now wants to use it for their internal KM training. To this purpose Alisa created an English version of her video which I proudly present here:

By the way, the German version can be found here.

The impact of information technology on knowledge creation

I am very proud about some numbers sent to me today: The article The impact of information technology on knowledge creation: An affordance approach to social media, which I wrote in 2014 together with Prof. Heinz-Theo Wagner and Dr. David Wagner and which was published in the Journal of Enterprise Information Management, has been downloaded over 5000 times and received over 100 citations in various scientific publications.

Curious? Here you go!