Sep 22, 2006 Knowledge-driven organization

I'm reading
"Building a Knowledge-Driven Organization"
by Robert H. Buckman

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3 stages of history.

1. Product was king. Having the latest and newest products and programs was what gave a company an edge. Companies differentiated themselves on products; they were what we now call product-driven organizations.

2. Something new entered the marketplace, the concept of bids and sole sourcing. Having the newest products became less important than having the best cost structure, pricing, and breadth of product line. Companies had to go from producing what they were good at to producing (or at least being able to deliver) everything their customers needed. In many cases that meant picking up the product line from dozens of other suppliers. The market-driven scramble was on.

3. Eventually, we ran out of ways to bolster margins by cost savings on the actual products. The industry’s survivors were all at rock bottom together and all selling each other’s output and the world had to find another way to differentiate among them.

---> When you can’t be cheaper or more comprehensive than your competition, you have to be smarter. What you know and how well you can use your knowledge become crucial to success and even survival: the marketplace is no longer product-driven or market-driven; it’s knowledge-driven.

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I think now our company is something around product-driven and market-driven.

I'll look into applying something about knowledge sharing to make my organization more dynamic. I'll show you my plan next time.