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Recommended BooksThe Innovation Superhighway: Harnessing Intellectual Capital for Prosperityby Debra M. Amidon
Reviewed by Xenia Stanford Are you still trying to speed down the information superhighway? If so, you have been left behind. The new superhighway is not paved with information or even knowledge management. It is constructed from innovation and collaborative strategies as Amidon shows us in her latest book: The Innovation Superhighway: Harnessing Intellectual Capital for Prosperity. Many now are picking up the term innovation in the context of intellectual advantage realizing there is more than the process of knowledge management needed for sustainability and that the true value of KM lies in the product. That product is innovation. Debra M. Amidon is the true leader of Knowledge Innovation® (a term which she has registered) and has herself innovated this term in the context of knowledge and the concepts behind it. In fact she incorporated her organization and global network of knowledge practitioners as ENTOVATION for ENTerprise innOVATION. Her first book Innovation Strategy for the Knowledge Economy: The Ken Awakening (Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1997) introduced us to these ideas long before others were talking about anything but knowledge management and best practices. "They just don't get it" I used to proclaim. "If you emulate what others do, you will only ever be second-rate". Don't get me wrong. I am not saying that I had conceived the term and depth of meaning before Amidon. Rather I was ready for someone to give me the words and ideas to express what that difference was. Immediately upon reading her first book, I had a Ken Awakening! "It's all there!" I thought to myself "in one small portable tome". Now I had something to show others in writing so it would not seem like I was a lone voice in the wilderness. Rather I found a stronger deeper voice than my own and I grew more knowledgeable with it. Yes, I immediately felt a Ken kinship with Amidon and when we began to correspond the feeling was mutual. First she did us the honour of joining our KnowMap Board to expand our view globally and link us to the intellectual capital and collaboration available from her amazing ENTOVATION network of over 8000 theorists and practitioners spanning more than 90 countries. Then she selected me as one of the 100 people on the Global Knowledge Leadership Map. Now I am deeply honoured to be one of the 21 Ken Practitioners featured in her new book. Thus I cannot write a dispassionate review based on only the contents of the book in isolation. I feel I must show you the value of her work on those who open her books and their minds to the new ideas and concepts she innovates. For I am not alone! Amidon describes Ken as "having knowledge and a range of vision to know where that knowledge may be applied". In a recent discussion with a former CEO and Chairperson of a major energy company, I was asked: "so what is knowledge management all about?" The part that hit home to him in all of the words I spoke was that definition. "For if it [KM] cannot be applied for the value of the organization then it is not worth a penny in spending. But if it can be applied for prosperity, then it is worth many millions to the bottom line," he said. Also recently I attended a strategic meeting of Albertans discussing the means to a sustainable economic future based on knowledge in addition to more tangible assets. We are known for our energy and agricultural products, which are unfortunately economically subject to weather and the environment. Yet something we pride ourselves on is that we are also, and want to be increasingly so, known for our know-how. This something can sustain us beyond the volatility of climatic fluctuations and in fact help us overcome them. When I mentioned Debra M. Amidon and the strategy she espouses for harnessing intellectual capital for prosperity through knowledge innovation and collaborative advantage, I saw many heads nodding in agreement. Later several came up to me and professed that they regarded her as a mentor ever since her first book. Albertans will be pleased to learn that Amidon acknowledges three of us in Chapter 13, which is entitled: Exemplar Ken Practitioners. Out of the 21 people featured from 17 countries there are five from Canada, including the three Albertans. Not a bad count on the KEN radar screen. Now I have talked about the impact but not the content of the new book. My first reaction when I read the preview copy was as follows:
Some of the most profound possibilities are the blending of the old and the new. Rather than trashing information and knowledge management history as a travesty of things gone wrong, Amidon shows how these were the building blocks to reach the heights we have achieved and by understanding that we are ready to continue layering the foundation to even greater heights. Yes, even mistakes as well as successes are building material for the future. She examines the E100 and other projects for what went right and what went wrong so the lessons will be learned and not lost. So the learning can be applied rather than forgotten. Instead of smashing the traditional value paradigm based on cost, time and quality, Amidon ties it into the new knowledge value proposition based on economics, technology and behaviour. She brings us from planning to innovation strategy. She shows us how. We are moved beyond maps to an atlas for innovation (something that engenders in me the concept of a knowledge topography rather than a flat surface) with three layers: mapping, scaling and compass. Just as we use maps for travel, so we must use these concepts for business planning and innovation strategy. It is this notion of the evolution of maps that illustrates that what we are now managing is as different as was the view of earth from the Apollo...the world without boundaries.
In architecting our future, she demonstrates the intellectual capital of nations with Singapore as an example of "the innovation nation". She re-introduces us to the ten dimensions of innovation strategy and expands on how to use them to measure innovation intangibles. A timeline of evolution spins into networks and communities of practice taking us from one level to multiple layers of economics. Knowledge workers are explored from Drucker's original statement identifying this idea to the underlying competencies, motivation and leadership needed. The 7 C's of modern knowledge leadership is unfolded and ten characteristics of leaders and ten of laggards are explained. She visions how all of this can lead into a borderless executive search. While acknowledging that knowledge innovation goes beyond technology, Amidon does not forget it as an important link from collaborative technologies to virtuality, innovation portals and e-markets. It is all there. Thinking of the globe as an infinite circle of opportunities, Amidon covers the ENTOVATION history as a momentum in knowledge strategy. She brings us to the understanding of how these trends of innovation strategy and leadership have contributed to evolving innovation infrastructures.
For do not be misled - innovation does not simply imply creativity. It goes far beyond as a strategy for economic sustainable prosperous organizations, nations and the world. Part of her vision for this new millennium is the Blueprint for 21st Century Innovation and creating the world trade of ideas. It is not just new thinking and new ideas but the application of these strategically that will make or break the future. You too will need to come at this as a personal unveiling to feel its full impact. If you don't find this the first time you read it, go back to her earlier books and then re-read to realize the full force of the ken awakening and the deeper understanding her latest work can offer. Then you will be able to pick up the gauntlet Amidon throws down: Are you ready to innovate the future… together? However, don't take it just from my words - you can read what has sparked the imaginations and inspirations of other knowledge leaders from around the globe at www.entovation.com/forthcoming.htm#saying Read the press releases about it at the following: www.entovation.com/whatsnew/ and the KnowMap News Release. Also you may read a sample chapter and the table of contents at www.entovation.com/forthcoming.htm Then buy or even borrow this book (I know you will want your own copy after you read it) and let your mind witness the wonders of how we can move beyond the information highway and the knowledge management cycle into the world of the innovation superhighway. For US and International orders: Read the Reviews of Debra M. Amidon's other publications: Global Knowledge Primer Innovation Strategy for the Knowledge Economy: The Ken Awakening
Innovation Strategy for the Knowledge Economy... Study Guide
The Architecture Primer Creating the Knowledge-Based Business Collaborative Innovation and the Knowledge Economy
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