Corporate Instinct: Building a Knowing Enterprise for the 21st Century (Hardcover)

by Thomas M. Koulopoulos (Author), Richard Spinello (Author), Wayne Toms (Author), Wayne D. Toms (Author) "Corporate instinct is a company's collective sixth sense enabling it to overcome its own memory and respond instantaneously and effectively to market opportunity, customers, and..." (more)
Key Phrases: corporate instinct, knowing enterprise, instinctive organization, New York, General Foods, Harvard Business Review (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Written by one of the nation's best-known technology consultants, this book presents a set of management and technology tools to help manage an organization's shared knowledge and cultivate its intellectual assets. Drawing on interviews with 350 companies from across the economic spectrum, Corporate Instinct offers a detailed road map for developing your own corporate instinct and a comprehensive context for understanding how and why this sixth sense offers enduring competitive advantage. Filled with insights on revamping a corporation's culture, structure and core competencies for the 21st century, this book offers a blueprint for a business which focuses on innovation, not administration.

From the Publisher
Praise for Corporate Instinct: "Koulopoulos has utilized his wide experience as an entrepreneur and top management advisor to add a completely new perspective on the phenomenon of corporate success. The idea of corporate instinct is a strong antidote to the 'tried and true' management concepts that simply don't work any longer." - Geoffrey James, Author, Success Secrets from Silicon Valley, Business Wisdom of the Electronic Elite

"Corporate Instinct provides a profound contribution to better understanding the evolution of businesses as they attempt to meet the competitive challenges in today's marketplace. This is a must-read for all executives who want to better understand the inextricable linkage between organizational success and the effectiveness of the people within the organization, and to allow them to successfully lead their organizations into the future." - Edward G. Lewis, Former Assistant Secretary for Information Resources Management in the Bush Administration

"The book moves fast; and, at the conclusion, the reader feels that a tour de force briefing has just occurred, that Koulopoulos has something valuable to say which must be shared with others." - Tom Brown, Publisher of the MANAGEMENT GENERAL online (www.mgeneral.com) newsletter.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 284 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (October 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471292796
• ISBN-13: 978-0471292791
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,134,189 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent primer on enterprise Knowledge Management, June 2, 2000

By A Customer

I've always had much respect for Tom Koulopoulos and the Delphi Group. But I expected going into this book that there would be a sales pitch embedded into the book of some sort. Not so.

The book is a very readable, very practical guide to enabling your organization to develop instict. What does "instinct" mean in the context of a business you ask? It means that when the market shifts, your company is structured in such a way that it can shift immediately to accomodate and exploit it. Rather than observing market changes and reacting to them retrospectively, you are there from the beginning.

To accomplish this, companies must balance their characteristics according to a grid of:

* INTERNAL AWARENESS

* EXTERNAL AWARENESS

* INTERNAL RESPONSIVENESS

* EXTERNAL RESPONSIVENESS

The book is all about the specifics of this grid and how you can acheive balance. At the end of the book is a very helpful Corporate Instinct Assessment test for use on your company.

For those who desire to put feet on KM theory, I recommend, as a start, reading "Corporate Instinct" and "The Character of a Corporation" (Goffee and Jones) together. The latter fills in many of the Cultural elements not treated in the former.