Continuous Learning & Development

A continuously updated list of citations or references around the knowledge driven economy:

“Knowledge-Based Work: The second factor that makes jobs dysfunctional today is more and more work is knowledge-based rather than industrial. (Even the new industrial work is knowledge-based: the latest model of car has more built-in computing power than some of the first generation of satellites).” Helgesen, Sally: Leading from the grass roots,Page 20 f., in The Drucker Foundation. The Leader of the Future, Jossey-Bass Publisher, 1996

“The equation of leadership with positional power also reveals assumptions about the nature and shape of our organizations that are fast becoming obsolete. Certainly, such as linkage fails to reflect the decentralized and organic structure of what Peter Drucker has called the knowledge organization, which is the dominant form in our emergin postcapitalist era. Drucker notes that “the knowledges” that today’s organizations exist to make productive are by definition widely distributed. They are to be found not only among those at the top, the “lead horses”, but also among those who constitute what in the industrial era we called the rank and file. Indeed, people in the ranks no longer interchangeable ciphers performing simple repetitive tasks; in the knowledge organization, they are all knowledge workers. Each posses specific sets of skills and varieties of expertise, all of which are subject to continual upgrading.” Bridges, William: Leading the De-jobbed organization,Page 14 f., in The Drucker Foundation. The Leader of the Future, Jossey-Bass Publisher, 1996

“In a world where knowledge-worker companies are multiplzing, this is an especially crucial passage. Today’s twenty-two-year-old individual contributor in a dot.com company is tomorrow’s CEO. She no longer has to wait thirty years to ascend to the top spot; she may be ready in five or ten years (or it may be even less). Plus, first-time managers in knowledge-worker companies have a tremendous impact on productivity (in terms of cost efficiency and revenue growth). If they’re acting like individual contributors, their impact will be reduced. For these resons alone, organizations must do more than just give lip servcie to the importance of this passage.” Charan, Ram; Drotter, Stephen; Noel, James: The Leadership Pipeline - How to build the Leadership Powered Company; Jossy-Bass, 2001, Page 34

Wired cofounder Kevin Kelly recently reported that humans have “published” at least 32 million books; 750 million articles and essays; 25 million songs; 500 million images; 500 000 movies; 3 million videos, TV shows, and short films; and 100 billion public Web pages - and most of this knowledge explosion took place in the lst half century. Now add the constant stream of new knowledge created every day; so much, in fact, that the stock of human knowledge now doubles every five years. Tapscott, Don; Williams, Anthony D.: Wikinomics, Atlantic Books, 2007, Page 151 f.

“Collaboration, publication, peer review, and exchange of precompetitive information are now becoming keys to success in the knowledge-based economy.” Tapscott, Don; Williams, Anthony D.: Wikinomics, Atlantic Books, 2007, Page 153.

“In 1962, Douglas Engelbart wrote an extraordinary paper entitled “Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework”, where he explained how exlectronic workstations could augment the thinking and communications abilities of what he called “knowledge workers” Tapscott, Don; Williams, Anthony D.: Wikinomics, Atlantic Books, 2007, Page 245.

“The problem from an organizational and knowledge-management point of view, however, lies in the inability of firms to capture and codify those moments of inspired brilliance - the moments when someone does something spontaneous that could be the key to unlocking a whole new approach to getting things done. Mayfield suggests the self-organizing group formation process should occur in social software. “Those are the moments where the greatest amount of learning occurs”, he says. Tapscott, Don; Williams, Anthony D.: Wikinomics, Atlantic Books, 2007, Page 256.

What is the impact on future Merger & Aquisitions ?
“Feigen points out that holding on to talent after a merger is an adverse selection process. “The most desirable people with the strongest resumes start marketing themselves first, and those are the people you want. Then you’ve got people down the line who may be high performers, but they’re younger. They’re saying, ‘Oh my God, my mentor, my boss just left,’ and they start looking. Not only do you lose the good leaders, but you also lower the morale of the up-and-comers if you aren’t prepared to take quick action to stem possible losses. A knowledge economy where people are truly your assests can implode very quickly.”"Carey, Dennis C.; Ogden, Dayton: The Human Side of M&A, Oxford University Press, 2004, Page 65 

“Court employees. Especially in knowledge-based industries, losing talented employees is the same as losing business assets. Court them as ardently as you court customers.” Carey, Dennis C.; Ogden, Dayton: The Human Side of M&A, Oxford University Press, 2004, Page 68

“Work No Longer Has Clear Boundaries
A major factor in the mounting stress level is that the actual nature of our jobs has changed much more dramatically and rapidly than have our training for and our ability to deal with work. In just last half of the twentieth century, what constituted “work” in the industrialized world was transformed from assembly-line, make-it and move-it kinds of activity to what Peter Drucker has so aptly termed “knowledge work”.
Allen, David: Getting Things Done, The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, Pengiun Books, 2001, Page 5.

“The Real Work of Knowledge Work
Welcome to the real-life experience of “knowledge work”, and a profound operational principle: You have to think about your stuff more than you realize but not as much as you’re afraid you might. As Peter Drucker has written, “In knowledge work… the task is not given; it has to be determined. ‘What are the expected results from this work?’ is … the key question in making knowledge workers productive. And it is a question that demands risky decisions. There is usually no right answer; there are choices instead. And results have to be clearly specified, if productivity is to be achieved.”
Allen, David: Getting Things Done, The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, Pengiun Books, 2001, Page 15.

“Too often “managing by wandering around” is an excuse for getting away from amorphous piles of stuff. This is where the need for knowledge-work athletics really shows up. Most people did not grow up in  a world where defining the edges of work and managing huge numbers of open loops were required. But when you’ve developed the skilll and habits of processing input rapidly into a rigorously defined system, it becomes much easier to trust your judgement calls about the dance of what to do, what to stop doing, and what to do instead.”
Allen, David: Getting Things Done, The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, Pengiun Books, 2001, Page 198 f..

“This doesn’t mean that everyone has to do everything. I hope I have described a way to relate to our releatively new knowledge-based world that gives room for everyone to have a lot more to do than he or she can do. The critical issue will be to facilitate a constant renegotiation process with all involved, so they feel OK about what they’re not doing. That’s real knowledge work, at a more sophisticated level. But there’s little hope of getting there without having bulletproof collection systems in play. Remember, you can’t renegotiate an agreement with yourself that you can’t remember you made. And you certainly can’t renegotiate agreements with others that you’ve lost track of.”
Allen, David: Getting Things Done, The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, Pengiun Books, 2001, Page 235.

“The rapid growth in scientific and technological knowledge is one driver that has contributed to the growing importance of human capital. Second, the information technology boom of the 1990s and the accompanying talent shortage got firms thinking about human capiatla as never before. Finally, there is a growing recognition that more and more of the market value of firms rests in their human capital.” Lawler III, Edward E., Worley Christopher G.: Built to Change, How to achieve sustained organizational effectiveness, Joessy-Bass, 2006, Page 5.

“Knowledge Is Central
The centrality of knowledge to organizational effectiveness has changed the very essence of organizations, what they do, and how they do it. Because of the growth in knowledge and the ways it is used by organizations, the nature of individua work has changed. Increasingly, work in developed countries is knowledge work in which people manage information, deal in abstract concepts, and are valued for their ability to think, analyze, and problem-solve. Fewer and fewer people are doing the mind-numbing, reptitive manual tasks that used to dominate the work scene. ” Lawler III, Edward E., Worley Christopher G.: Built to Change, How to achieve sustained organizational effectiveness, Joessy-Bass, 2006, Page 5 f.