Smart Business: How Knowledge Communities Can Revolutionize Your Company

From the Book: Foreword An Economy of Ideas Alan M. Webber Fast Company Boston, MA We are living in an economy of ideas. Just look around you, at the companies that are dominating today's headlines, at the organizations that are commanding our attention, at the people and teams that are capturing our imaginations. What we are witnessing is the creation of a new world of business, a place vastly different from that of the past. The old ways of keeping score -- measures of tangible assets, factors of production such as land, factories, equipment, office buildings -- are giving way to new metrics: The team with the best ideas, the best people, the most integrated way of working, the greatest passion, the closest relationship with the customer, the most out-of-the-box business model, the best execution, that's the team that wins. Soft assets matter most today. Ideas. People. Teamwork. Communities. Passion. Values. And knowledge. That's the world that Jim Botkin and this book seek to bring to life. It is the new world of work, an exciting, exacting, creative place, populated by men and women with fresh ways of thinking and purposeful ways of working. It is, importantly, a post-reengineering world. For most people and most companies, business process reengineering is a troublesome memory, a "Why did we do that to ourselves?" experience that today awakens feelings of organizational trauma and human distress. The recollection of downsizings, outsourcings, and other slash-and-bum tactics that celebrated business processes before business people, has left people wondering what that original belief actually was. Did we ever really believe, as seriousbusiness people,tnd of guide we need at this time, a playful mind and a trusted companion who can take us into a future where the old maps don't pertain and the only compass available is inside your head and heart. If you choose to follow Jim Botkin into this exploration of a new business frontier, you will very quickly encounter some compelling questions that challenge most of your deepest-held assumptions about how business works. Take, for example, the question, Where do good ideas come from? This, it seems to me, is an elemental question, one that sits very close to the heart of the new economy. There is, of course, an old economy answer to this question. Good ideas -- often more formally masquerading as "innovation" or "creativity" or "strategy" -- come from the top. They come from the CEO, the boss, the corner office. After all, the big dog at the top is the one person in the organization, with all the answers, right? Or maybe, in some organizations, good ideas come from the duly constituted Department of Good Ideas. These are the professionals who have all the credentials necessary to think big thoughts, do strategy, manage the innovation process, and marshal the organization's resources to develop a breakthrough product or service. Coming up with good ideas -- that's serious business, right? The kind of stuff best left to the pros. Or so it went. But, as most of us know about life in the new economy -- an economy that runs on ideas -- the old sources are running dry The big boss in the corner office is too far away from the fast changes in technology to know what's really going on. Customers are too fickle, competitors too slippery, markets too dynamic. And as for those pros in the Department of Good Ide as, they spend too much time talking to each other to have much of an idea of what's happening in the real world. They're playing by the old rules, and that's like dancing the minuet to rap music. No, good ideas come from the heads of the people in the organization. Good ideas come from the trenches, where people are closest to the action. Good ideas come from your customers -- if you're close enough to listen to them, and humble enough to pay attention. Good ideas come from your most recent hires -- the Young Turks who are least likely to accept, as a valid response to their probing questions, the lamest of answers: "Because that's the way we've always done it." Good ideas are resident everywhere in the organization, at all levels, in all functions. They are in the dirty fingernails of the factory workers, the laptop notes of the sales force, the service notes of the telephone operators, the repair records of the tech reps in the field. In other words, as this book makes clear through anecdote and analysis, good ideas are the inchoate stuff that organizations carry around with them in the brains of their people. Good ideas are knowledge waiting to be tapped, and it's the trademark of a smart organization -- a fast company -- that it knows how to honor and legitimize the tacit knowledge that its people have stored up in their work practices and make it visible. They do this by answering a second question: How do you capture good ideas? Like the first question, Where do good ideas come from, this one is important because of the stark comparison between thinking in the old and in the new economy In the old economy good ideas were treated as a scarce commodity. For all the resources devoted to stra tegy, innovation, and new product development, you could never be sure when a good idea would emerge -- or an idea good enough to warrant mobilizing major corporate backing for it (much less risking your next promotion or your career). As a consequence, good ideas were accidentally generated -- and just as accidentally lost. In the new economy there is less of a gap between coming up with an idea and trying it. It's a part of the idea economy Thinking and doing are lightning-fast and linked. So capturing good ideas and executing them -- quickly decisively and curiously -- is a key capability. Just as we've learned that knowledge is seeded throughout the ranks of a company's people, the ability to tap that knowledge is vested in communities. It is, in part, an unanticipated feature of the Web: like-minded people use information technology to cross boundaries, share ideas, engage in dialogue, and generate good ideas. Or they use coffee bars to do it -- either way they are creating the kinds of new communities of interest that form and re-form constantly talking their way into new ways of working, new ways of competing, new ways of creating value. Knowledge and communities, good ideas and fast execution, smart conversations and short feedback loops -- this is the stuff of a business revolution. It is the stuff of exciting times in which to live and work, a time of individual liberation, personal challenge, great opportunity, uncharted possibilities. It is the stuff of a dynamic new world of work life and personal life -- and it is the stuff that Jim Botkin has clearly focused on and made sense of in this book. Read it, think about it, talk about it, share it. Take it seriously and have fun with it -- and remember: You're in good hands with Jim. Copyright © 1999 by Jim Botkin