Customer Reviews

Reaching for the Knowledge Edge: How the Knowing Corporation Seeks, Shares & Uses Knowledge for Strategic Advantage

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John Brown, CEO of BP Amoco stated that: "To generate extraordinary value for its shareholders, a company has to learn more than its competitors and apply that knowledge throughout its business faster and more widely than they do." Hatten and Rosenthal make a valiant effort to layout a framework for testing the level of organizational knowledge in a corporation. They discuss the impacts of not having the necessary knowledge and establish a strategy for improving institutional learning.
However, it is not clear to me whether this is indeed a book on knowledge management or rather one on business systems. While it addresses the ephemeral and doughy subject of organizational knowledge it does so in a very mechanistic fashion using best practice techniques out of Business Process Analysis and Performance Metrics. It links these together in a consistent methodology for improving the long-term performance of the modern enterprise. But only in passing does it refer to other factors required for success, such as compensation systems, and it does so in one sentence without painting the full picture of needs. Hatten and Rosenthal outline a model using the 3Cs (Customer Relationships, Process Capabilities and Organizational Competencies) to assess the effectiveness of the enterprise. After describing how to assess the level of each dimension, how to identify gaps, and how to overcome those gaps, they go on to discuss how to use the model to assess future ventures being considered by the business. They consider the "stretch" that needs to take place in each dimension and whether the existing organization can handle the stretch by itself, or whether new capabilities and competencies need to be acquired through capital programs, recruiting or new partnerships.
The book then goes on to discuss the use of corporate experimentation and performance metrics to expand the corporation's knowledge. Finally, "Reaching for the Knowledge Edge", ends by discussing how individuals and corporations can move towards institutionalizing the learning process and becoming "knowing" organizations.
Throughout, Hatten and Rosenthal illustrate their points with real life examples from corporations that include HP, IBM and Laura Ashley. They also provide an abundance of diagrams, tables and lists of questions to clarify the text and provide a resource to the practitioner. Unfortunately their style lacked flow, and at times the text was hard to follow, particularly when discussing stretching the 3Cs.
In spite of neither providing a major breakthrough in thinking nor covering the whole space adequately, "Reaching for the Knowledge Edge" provides a valuable update to existing practice. A book that should definitely be included in the practitioner's library!