Knowledge Management As an Economic Development Strategy
The shift to an information economy is creating new challenges for economic development. As knowledge and information play an increasingly important role in economic activity, the needs of businesses have changed. More importantly, the nature of the business opportunities has shifted. These opportunities are twofold:
· to create new information and knowledge-based enterprises, and
· to utilize information and knowledge better in existing companies.
The tools and techniques of Knowledge Management can help economic development practitioners face this new environment. Economic development organizations can use KM tools to enhance the external communications of local companies, including for e-commerce and marketing. They can also promote the use of KM tools and techniques to help local businesses capture and utilize their knowledge and information assets.
More importantly, KM tools and techniques can be used by economic development practitioners to uncover local information assets and entrepreneurial activities that can serve as the bases for future economic development. Finally, economic development practitioners can use these tools to enhance knowledge sharing among key members of the community and to capture and share tacit knowledge within their own organizations.
Knowledge management can be a powerful tool in economic development—but only if we can harness its power to the unique needs of economic development activities. As this review has shown, the use of KM tools in economic development is just emerging. Just as companies are learning a new way of operating, economic development organizations need to learn and experiment with these tools and techniques. Economic development practitioners should be encouraged and supported in their efforts to use and tailor these tools to meet their own needs and be encouraged to share their successes and failures. In essence, we need to set up a KM process for understanding and sharing best KM practices.
Economic development in the information age requires better use of information and knowledge. It requires unlocking the information and knowledge assets of a community as the driver of local economic development. It also requires unlocking the hidden information and knowledge about a community and about the process of economic development.
The information economy is not about the information technology industries. It is about the use of information and knowledge—formal and tacit—in economic activities. Building a strong local economy means developing and cultivating the local knowledge and information base. KM tools and techniques can provide the foundation upon which to build successful local information-age economy.
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