Knowledge as a Production Factor

The speed with which companies derive and implement knowledge is a preeminent factor in differentiating between successful and unsuccessful companies.

Frequent changes in environments force companies to give quick answers to questions such as "what should be done?", "how should it be done?" and "when and where should it be done?" Various functions only having a narrow or inadequate knowledge base frequently spells out less-than-optimum decision-making processes.

This calls for ideas and instruments for gathering knowledge with corporate impact, processing it in terms of targets and distributing it in a fashion adequate to the purpose.

As long as the company was able to foresee the environmental parameters that dictate success and integrate them into corporate planning, the management level was able to focus on adapting and streamlining organisational systems.

This is why information was increasingly identified as a competitive factor for both guiding and controlling corporate processes.

However, the hallmark of modern corporate settings is a high level of instability and insecurity. Therefore, you have to proactive and not just active if you want to organise.

This calls for flexibility, defined as the capability to learn to identify opportunities at an early stage, come up with new ideas and, more than anything else, to be faster than the competition at translating information into knowledge.