Smart Business: How Knowledge Communities Can Revolutionize Your Company [Hardcover]

Jim Botkin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 11, 1999

Knowledge is most productive when it is shared by all. This simple but profound insight, long accepted in the academic, scientific, and medical communities, is about to radically transform business.

Our economy has become inundated with information, yet often businesses are unable to use and exploit it. How can managers organize their workplaces to effectively share, expand, and exploit knowledge? Companies must create and nurture knowledge communities to unlock their comparative advantages, explains Dr. Jim Botkin, founder and president of the InterClass consortium -- whose members include more than twenty major international corporations such as Xerox, AT&T, Marriott, Saturn, Volvo, and Prudential. In Smart Business, he shows how older, established companies from many industries around the world are experimenting with new communities both large and small, to renew their mission and get results in the new knowledge economy.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Botkin, founder and president of the International Corporate Learning Association, focuses on the challenges organizations face, the questions they should answer, and the basic facts they should recognize as they make the transition from informal communities of practice to formal knowledge communities. Challenges include a fear of cannibalizing existing products or services, the diluted power of "old-timers" in the hierarchy, and the alarming regularity with which industrial leaders follow their core technologies into obsolescence and obscurity. Botkin identifies key changes: the switch from computers as number crunchers to computers as connectors, the emergence of the Internet, and the need to value people over technology. He includes examples from the experiences of Xerox, Marriott International, Saturn Corporation, Sweden Post, Motorola, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Essential for all library staff, supervisors, and directors, this is recommended for academic, public, and special libraries.ANorman B. Hutcherson, Beale Memorial Lib., Bakersfield, CA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Botkin is cofounder and president of the International Corporate Learning Association (InterClass), a "knowledge community" of Fortune 500 companies. He has been writing about learning and knowledge for more than 20 years, most recently coauthoring The Monster under the Bed: How Business Is Mastering the Opportunity of Knowledge and Profit with Stanley Davis. Here Botkin shows how knowledge communities are supplanting teams as building blocks for "organizations focused more on networks than on traditional hierarchies." A knowledge community is a group of managers and workers "whose mission is to create, use, and apply the new knowledge in their industry for tangible business purposes." Botkin shows how companies within InterClass have utilized knowledge communities, and he explains how they can be applied to enhance the products a company makes, to organize and manage companies better, and to understand and improve their cultures, learning, and leadership. David Rouse

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Free Press (June 11, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684850249
• ISBN-13: 978-0684850245
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,535,418 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This books goes beyond technology in addressing KM issues!, June 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Smart Business: How Knowledge Communities Can Revolutionize Your Company (Hardcover)

In today's hyper-linked, blurred world, it's not surprising that the KM field is overflowing with books and papers, each touting the "best" solution. So why should you read this book?

What Jim Botkin realizes and communicates in this excellent book is that there is no single "best" KM solution. Rather, Smart Business clearly tells the story that only a holistic approach can address the real KM issues companies face.

Instead of advocating a specific KM technology or process,he provides numerous examples of how real companies are dealing with the significant cultural, as well as the technological, issues around KM. Together, these examples paint an impressionistic picture of what it takes to be at the forefront of successful KM.

What these companies have found out, and what Jim reports back, is that KM is more about constructing a community rather than installing a piece of software or hardware. And building communities is not something that can easily be reduced to a series of steps or processes. Communities arise from shared experiences. And if telling stories is one of the best ways to share an experience, then by the time the reader has finished, they will have experienced a bit of what it's like to be inside a KM leader.

What's exciting about Smart Business is that the stories are not filtered through Jim. Instead the reader hears them "first hand" directly from the company. You read about how Xerox made the transition from the document company to a knowledge company from Priscilla Douglas of Xerox's Public Sector area. Helena Light Hadley, Director of Marriott's New Business Ventures, tells you how they use KM to assure high levels of customer service in an industry with traditionally high turn-over rates.

So if you're looking to go beyond technology and into the fundamental cultural issues in KM, Jim Botkin's Smart Business is a great story to hear!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Tour de Force on the knowledge revolution, June 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Smart Business: How Knowledge Communities Can Revolutionize Your Company (Hardcover)

Dr. Jim has done it again. The author of the best selling, Monster Under the Bed, has given us the most concise and authoritative work yet on knowlege: its management; communities; and the new knowledge business.

The book breaks new ground and also summarizes where we are in the whirlwind of knowledge as it rips through the entire global economy. It incorporates a number of insightful case studies from real companies around the world on how they are coping with this new phenomena.

The real value to readers, initiated and novice, is how organizations, through knowledge communities, can transform themselves, even in legacy companies. These are powerful ideas, stories and concepts that together create a whole new way of doing business-- SMART BUSINESS.

I loved the analogy to bees and the clever artwork. Nature itself can teach us many lessons if only we had the patience to learn. You can learn a great deal from this book. "Dell or be Delled", as the saying now goes. This book is a manifesto for the emerging fast company. Read it and move into the future. Disregard it at your own peril!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Informative, well written and provacative!, April 16, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Smart Business: How Knowledge Communities Can Revolutionize Your Company (Hardcover)

This is the fourth book of Botkin's that I have read and it is by far, the best. He has written a superb book for leaders yearning to understand how to leverage the brainpower of their work force. Dr. Botkin lays out a strong case for less bureaucracy and more shared learning. I read Smart Business in two days and found myself consistently reaching for the highlighter. He uses powerful examples, both from the Fortune 500 companies he has worked with and the natural environment of the honeybees that almost took his life. Smart Business gives a historical perspective of how we arrived at the knowledge age. It is packed with examples of how knowledge communities bring tangible benefits to organizations. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Leaders who desire to catch a glimpse of the future should read Smart Business.