Does your organization use knowledge to gain competitive advantage?

Abstract

The rationale behind this article is that frequently the link is not made between organizations gaining competitive advantage and the use of good quality information and maintaining the infrastructure to store, organize and retrieve that knowledge and information. It will examine what constitutes competitive advantage and the use of knowledge to create it. Specific types of knowledge that generate competitiveness will be reviewed along with some examples of proactive usage.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

[1] Michael E. Porter (1980) Competitive Strategy: techniques for analyzing industries and competitors. New York, Free Press .

[2] Michael E. Porter (1985) Competitive Advantage: creating and sustaining superior performance. New York, Free Press , p.3-3.

[3] Jane Pavitt (2000) ‘In Goods We Trust’. In Brand.new, VandA Publications, p. 26-26.

[4] Pavitt ibid, p.39.

[5] Walter Goldsmith and David Clutterbuck (1998) The Winning Streak Mark II: how the world’s most successful companies stay on top through today’s turbulent times. London, Orion Business Books .

[6] Xavier Gilbert (2000) ‘From Information to knowledge - how managers learn’. In Competing with Information: a Manager’s Guide to Creating Business value with information content, ed. D. Marchand ,. p.104-104. Chichester, John Wiley , 2000.

[7] Liam Fahey (1999) Competitors: outwitting, outmanouevering and outperforming. New York, John Wiley , p.268-268.

[8] Susanne Hauschild , Thomas Licht and Wolfram Stein , ‘Creating a knowledge culture’ . McKinsey Quarterly No. 1 2001, p 76-76 .

[9] Donald Marchand (2000) ‘Creating Business Value from Information’. In Competing with Information: a Manager’s Guide to Creating Business Value with Information Content, ed. D. Marchand , p. 25-25. New York, John Wiley .

10.

[10] K. Harris (1999) K Enterprise IQ: the Knowledge-Enabled Firm. Gartner Group .

11.

[11] Gilbert ibid, p.122-23.

12.

[12] B. Bowonder and T. Miyake , ‘Creating and sustaining competitiveness: information management strategies of Nippon Steel Corporation’ , International Journal of Information Management, 12, 1992, p 54-54 .

13.

[13] ‘CI for a “Road Runner”’ , Economy Competitor Intelligence Magazine 4(3), May-June 2001. (This is a report on a keynote speech given by Oren Harari at SCIP’s 2001 Annual Conference.)