Knowledge Management (KM) as Performance Amelioration’s First-Order Capability

The advent of the second economy changed entirely the understanding of the competitive drivers in a contemporary world and accentuated the need for organizations to focus on their knowledge base (far beyond the realm of information and communication technologies). Knowledge utilization has become in many industries the dominant paradigm of organizational management. Indelibly surrendered to a resource-based view of the growth, incumbents aimed, in most cases, at transforming such phenomenon (knowledge utilization) into a strategic asset for their survival, growth, and sustainability of the firm. Historical data on revenue, profit earnings, and market capitalization of the Northern American corporations corroborates this undergoing information/communication revolution as it demonstrates an indisputable upsurging alignment of intangible asset’s possession and value-appropriation. On the contrary, the stats of old heavy industry manufacturers uncover a declining spiral (in number and value), in counter cycle with knowledge-based companies exhibiting an extraordinary ability to flourish (proliferating in vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystems) and an extraordinary resilience, dominating already at this stage the top 10 Fortune 500 companies list. Hence, the firm’s prosperity is intrinsically linked with the formation of an essential dynamic capability—knowledge management (KM), nowadays being a categorical imperative not to be ignored at any exercise of organizational strategy’s redesign. Moreover, the bustle of reinforcing knowledge gains, updating skills, and refining KM systems implies an attentive screening of the outlook of the IT infrastructure options and a rupture with traditional view from the past of an all-in-one technological backend or frontend solution (e.g., ERP or CMS).