The Quest for Economic Recovery: Innovative Development and KM Perspectives

Abstract

Most organizations respond to an economic crisis by focusing on operational efficiency and/or on intellectual capital utilization and innovation. The conjecture is that intellectual capital confers distinct competitive advantage to an enterprise via knowledge management and knowledge spillovers and improved innovation capacity. Despite mixed empirical evidence to support this claim, intellectual capital and knowledge management remain at the forefront of an organization’s agenda during an economic downturn. Recent surveys from the field indicate some dissatisfaction with practical knowledge management. These findings are difficult to interpret because at the same time organizations appear to adopt the position that management of knowledge resources is extremely important from a strategic perspective. The objective of this chapter is to provide some new perspectives on what drives success in the knowledge economy and to demonstrate how knowledge management is the ideal response to the challenge of innovation