Knowledge Assets: Securing Competitive Advantage in the Information Economy

By Max H. Boisot

Book Overview

It is now widely recognized that the effective management of knowledge assets is a key requirement for securing competitive advantage in the emerging information economy. Yet the physical and institutional differences between tangible assets and knowledge assets remains poorly understood. If we are to meet the challenges of the information economy, then we need a new approach to property rights based on a deeper theoretical understanding of knowledge assets.

This clear, accessible study provides some of the key building blocks needed for a theory of knowledge assets. Boisot develops a powerful conceptual framework--the Information-Space or I-Space--for exploring the way knowledge flows within and between organizations. This framework will enable managers and students to explore and understand how knowledge and information assets differ from physical assets, and how to deal with them at a strategic level within their organizations.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0198290861
• ISBN13: 9780198290865
• Release Date: June 1998
• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Length: 306 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Serious and non-trendy

This is not a book by a management consultant capitalising on the tredy topic of knowledge management. The author is a social scientist with a business school background. He has thought hard about what knowledge is how it can be categorised in different dimensions, and implications for firms and nations. Anyone in academia (economics, sociolgy, management) interested in knowledge ought to read this book. The book is full of deep thinking and many of the ideas can be built upon and elaborated if you are a researcher. If you are not a researcher I don't think you will find this book valuable, unless you are a practitioner that are used to read good academic work. With good I mean relevant, accessible and rigorous. If you like to read that kind of material, get hold of this book. The author also has an earlier book called "Information space". It's my impression that book covers similar ground, but with a stronger focus on categorisation of knowledge in different dimensions.

Very powerful and innovative work on the information age

As a futures researcher at the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Research I have read tons of books on the information society. No one - absolutely no one - has been as powerful and innovative as Max Boisot's. He handles the most important aspects of information and knowledge and synthesizes them in one outstanding theory: The Information Space.The framework generates insight after insight. After my absorption of it, I simply can't resist using it in my own research and consulting. It has for example helped me evaluate business plans and think about different subjects as national strategies on education, e-communities, trade associations, innovation strategies and the philosophy of social sciences.Read this book and learn to think about the emerging society!

A brilliant framework for managing knowledge assets

It would be difficult to over-estimate the value of this book. It is very important contribution to our understanding of how to build and manage knowledge assets and, in particular, the rules by which knowledge gains and loses value and 'travels'.It is directly useful to business people who have to wrestle with strategies for managing knowledge. It is also a formidable piece of analytical architecture that links the management of knowledge assets to economic theory and learning theory. Considering the depth and range of the original thought packed into it, the book is surprisingly readable, partly because of the clarity and relevance of the examples with which the author illustrates his concepts. Perhaps of widest importance is the clarity and precision of the definitions offered, in a field in which the definitions have been notably 'muddy'. One of the things I have gained from reading the book is a much clearer 'mental model' of what knowledge management is all about, its dynamics and linkages, and what is happening at various stages in the development, codification and diffusion of knowledge.Because of its depth, density and range, absorbing the content requires real effort, but the effort is very worthwhile. It has several different audiences.Knowledge managers: Those directly responsible for knowledge management will want to read and understand this book in full. Business Strategists: The book provides a coherent and well argued rationale for developing strategies around the exploitation of the value in knowledge assets, based on the clearest explanation of the dynamics of knowledge value creation and dissipation that I have seen. Managers of Organisational Change: Anyone concerned with organisation change also needs to understand the underlying concepts for their relevance to strategies for learning and to the shaping and linking of organisational structures.Economists: Chapters 2 - 4 provide economists with a re-conception of the production function around data as a factor of production, and an explanation of the nature and dynamics of information value that is both challenging and important in integrating the realities of information and knowledge value into economic theory.Those with a more peripheral or general interest in knowledge management should at least read: * the Preface, which is a 2 1/2 page masterpiece in the expression of the central concept in a compressed form, * pages 12 - 14 and 18 of the Introduction and * they should scan Chapter 3: The Information Space (I-Space) to understand the author's three dimensional construct and its use. J-C Spender's short Foreword is also valuable in putting Boisot's work in context with other work, particularly Nonaka and Takeuchi's The Knowledge Creating Company. If general readers are tempted to go further, they will find an extraordinary range of thought-provoking concepts along with quite a lot of material that may be familiar from ot

A solid framework for organizational knowledge

After reading a number of trendy books on knowledge management, this is the second one with a good theoretical framework. It is not a HOW TO..book (the subtitle is not very informative). It is the fruit of solid analytical thinking. Boisot uses the information space, built from the variables 'codification, abstraction and diffusion'. With this framework he gives an original insight into many organizational aspects, like organizational learning, competences, information technology and organizational culture. I have choosen the book for the course I teach at the University of Amsterdam (Culture and Competences in Changing Organizations), after reading it with red ears.