Knowledge Creation & Innovation in Organizations: value-creation at the intersection of technology and business models

Organizational knowledge creation is generally associated with “Knowledge Management” (KM), being the latter a controversial, complex and multifaceted subject. In spite of the fact that the term (KM) is not yet stable, there’s been growing interest worldwide within the past two decades - from academics to practitioners - in the management of organizational knowledge and its related topics, such as “organizational epistemology”, “knowledge creation processes”, “knowledge-based theory of the firm”, “innovation management”, “enabling context and conditions”, “intellectual capital”, “organizational learning”, “knowledge taxonomies” and “social media”, among others. This seminar proposes an integrated-view of KM with special focus on the domains of knowledge creation and innovation. The following topics will be discussed:

• Sense-making: information scanning in the external environment, concerning the interpretation modes of “Discovery” and “Enactment”;
• Knowledge Creation and Organizational Learning: value-creation at the intersection of technology (products, services, processes and IT) and business models (value proposition, target, supply-chain);
• Decision-making: supported by the speaker’s SETR Framework, i.e., (S)trategy, (E)xecution, (T)ools and (R)esults.

Examples will be drawn from the speaker’s extensive research on KM and innovation in world-class organizations based in Brazil. The tentative conclusions suggest that (i) managing knowledge in organizations is fundamentally about creating an environment in the organization that is conducive to and encourages knowledge creation, sharing and use; (ii) knowledge creation processes must support organizational value creation at the intersection of technology and business models.