Dollars Follow Scholars

Changing the knowledge centricity game

Changing the knowledge centricity game

Organization, culture, skills, talent, tools, standardization – together all these challenge a company’s ability to become a true knowledge competitor. But organizations that seek to make rapid, substantive change are increasingly leveraging knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) providers for higher value, complex, specialized skill and knowledge-based work such as research and analytics. And these forward-thinking companies have not only found that providers are fully equipped to provide industry-specific and complex problem solving skill sets which enable them to become 360° knowledge competitors, but also that they have implemented privacy, security, and IP standards to mitigate any risk in transferring critical data.

Today, there is a ripe environment for the kind of high-end, strategic, partnership-based outsourcing that is KPO. A 2008 Economic Times article stated, ‘’According to reports, the KPO industry is estimated to be between USD 10-17 billion by 2010.” And while IT outsourcing (ITO) and business process outsourcing (BPO) have grown at compound annual rates of 34 percent over the last 5 years, and are projected to grow at 24 percent a year over the next 5, a research report by sourcing advisory firm TPI stated the KPO market is projected to grow by 50-70 percent annually. This explosive growth is due to KPO’s value proposition.

Smart companies are never afraid to change the business model when they must move corporate performance onto a new trajectory. In the case of knowledge processes, companies can tap into external resources when those resources can deliver knowledge processes with higher quality, greater efficiency and effectiveness, at a lower cost, in less time. The following exhibit highlights how KPO resolves the challenges faced on the path to knowledge centricity.

To underscore the benefits of KPO, consider what WNS’s team delivered to a leading consumer product goods company seeking to become a knowledge competitor

1)  incorporated the effects of various below-the-line, in-store elements on volume share, mapping sensitivity to volume share to various changes – effects that linear pricing models are unable to create;

2) simplified the planning and execution of promotions by crystallizing the dynamics of individual in-store elements;

3)  Increased the accuracy of forecasting volume share, providing 99.98 percent accuracy at the brand level and 63 percent accuracy at the SKU level;

4) Optimized the trade mix for maintaining share in various competitive scenarios;

5) improved efficiency in retailer relationships by providing easy-to-use strategies that can be communicated to retailers, even those who lack statistical expertise, thereby enabling the client to better manage in-store settings; and

6) Simulated changes in volume share that could occur when various merchandising plans are modeled.

As the leading KPO providers’ offerings have evolved, so has the range of industries to which they deliver services. For example, in addition to delivering discrete market research services to professional services firms or corporations, KPO now provides comprehensive, domain-targeted knowledge services such as business and financial research and analytics to clients in a wide range of industries including consumer packaged goods, consumer financial services and retail, often to a level of sophistication that cannot be rapidly or easily replicated in house. As it continues to evolve and grow, the KPO market is moving toward a shared services center of excellence model, the ‘Knowledge Center ofExcellence’, an approach that goes hand-in-hand with developing 360° knowledge capabilities.

]]>

The following diagram demonstrates the evolution of KPO services from discrete knowledge process work to integrated, vertically-specialized services – not unlike the shared services model that has been widely adopted for finance processes.

Over time, as providers assumed the delivery of end-to-end knowledge processes, the metrics on which they are judged have changed from simple service levels such as turnaround time or accuracy to whether or not the client achieves the business outcome it targeted by way of the knowledge process (e.g., collection analytics).

In its first phase, clients try out the KPO concept, testing providers’ capabilities by outsourcing lower-end, discrete knowledge processes. Satisfied with performance, companies often move to the second phase, testing the delivery of higher-end but still discrete processes, now delivered in a series or as a part of a program rather than as one-off projects.

When second phase success is evident, companies become comfortable leveraging a wider range of KPO provider capabilities. They are adopting an integrated approach to knowledge work, asking providers to deliver higher-end services such as customer lifetime value models or fraud management models. This takes them closer to the end-game, the establishment of a Knowledge Center of Excellence, where knowledge is created by a vertically-specialized provider and consumed throughout the organization.

Within these centers, resources are aligned with business challenges such as pricing and forecasting, and analytic/technical techniques such as data sets used and statistical techniques. This specialization institutionalizes the approach to similar kinds of problems. Further, analytic or research tasks for business challenges are broken down to match the resource specialization available – so a forecasting effort is broken into research tasks and quantitative/modeling tasks.

Senior analysts then pull together the work output from the team and synthesize it, extracting insights along the way. Appropriate individuals within the client organization interact with the centralized resource through web-based knowledge portals regardless of where they are geographically based.

These web portals also serve as a repository for responses to similar business challenges, helping analysts in different parts of the organization learn from the efforts of their peers thousands of miles away. The Knowledge Center of Excellence model ensures that knowledge creation is standardized to avoid disparate methodologies, leveraged across geographies to account for unique market differences, and institutionalized so that best practices are readily disseminated across the organization.

Even as the provider generates actionable insights for the client, the client is responsible for its consumption. And there are plenty of opportunities for dysfunction when the client acts on the insight. To avoid this situation, the provider team must align with the client’s organization. As a result of a tight alignment, the knowledge center is increasingly considered within the client’s organization as the ‘glue’ that brings the disparate functions to interact as never before, leading to superior decision making.

The knowledge center of excellence model of knowledge creation and consumption works for a variety of reasons, it enables a true 360° approach to solving the knowledge requirements of an organization in a cost effective manner. Naturally, organizations wish address all their analytic challenges in a holistic way. However, it is often prohibitively expensive to house a broad range of deeply skilled in-house professionals to oversee analytic solutions that range from the strategic to the purely tactical.

The Knowledge Center of Excellence model is a shared services environment where such high-end resources can be made available ‘on tap’ – enabling companies to get that 360° view of the business.

It transcends geographies and corporate silos. The model standardizes and integrates knowledge services to facilitate knowledge consumption across all of the client’s operations in all geographies.It institutionalizes knowledge. Knowledge is embedded in the organization through the sharing of best practices across geographic boundaries and corporate silos, thereby enabling better decision making and fostering innovation across the business. It reduces turnaround times by quickly bringing to fore resources and analytic output from similar engagements.

The Knowledge Center acts as a corporate repository, storing and cataloging documents such as process and training manuals that can be easily leveraged across the organization.

Strong knowledge sharing practices reduce errors in knowledge creation, thereby improving the quality of decision making.It supplements sub-optimal skill sets in knowledge workers. The center is comprised of a sizable team of resources that includes individuals with deep domain knowledge as well as those with deep analytics, business intelligence and research skills. It makes for an exceptionally diverse, well-rounded team. Further, these resources can be deployed to meet an organization’s ever-shifting analytical needs.

It is scalable. Data, processes, resources and institutional knowledge within the Knowledge Center of Excellence are organized to be scaled. Data is extracted from corporate data marts, scrubbed and made ready to be used again and again in a variety of ways by disparate knowledge processes.

Instituting standard operating procedures for knowledge processes ensures that solutions are executed in a consistent way with no need to go back to the drawing board each time a challenge surfaces. Skills are disaggregated so that no one skill becomes a bottleneck delivering a particular solution. The shared services environment ensures that slack resources can be redeployed at a moment’s notice for needs emerging around the globe.

 

While evolving a knowledge-centric organization is possible internally, the challenges are myriad. And although KPO can break through some of the challenges organizations face on the road to knowledge competition, the opportunity to truly compete with knowledge only comes with a complete 360° view of the business – made possible through a vertically-integrated, domain-specific Knowledge Center of Excellence

Author’s note: This article contains excerpts and out-takes from the WNS thought leadership whitepaper entitled, “Armed With Knowledge: Gaining competitive advantage through knowledge process outsourcing”To access the full KPO whitepaper, visit http://wns.com/kpoforcompetitiveadvantage

 

For more such article insights, please follow the link http://bit.ly/eMHhcl

Source: ArticlesBase.com

Purpose of Knowledge

Purpose of Knowledge

 

We propose to examine in this article the following question:

We are ssuming that knowledge, instigated by astonishment and natural curiosity, emerges as the result of the inevitable interaction between man and the universe. The process of thought interaction is indispensable for man’s being. From the moment of the fecundation of the ovule by the sperm (both unknown in origin and presence) and till the realization of the final human form, matured and adult, life phenomenon presents itself as a total enigma. If we accept the hypothesis of internal finality which shapes the final product in term of development, we still have to explain the how does it bring it about and the why should it bring it about. It remains also to answer questions concerning the presence, origin, reason of being of man. The same logic applies to all phenomena, for every object is subject to these questions.

Conflict between finality and hazard is subject to individual conviction. The basis of such conflict is the absence of evidence. Subjectivity dominates the attitude of the individual in order to reach a final personal conjectural conviction.

We consider that the very absence of such possible verifiability leaves the door open for conjecture. In fact, man stakes his choice on this uncertainty. The choice between the mecanicist-atomist-organicist point of view and the vitalist-causalist-finalist perspective is not based on proof; otherwise, the choice becomes baseless. In our perspective we do not presume that hazard is the basis of the choice. It is the opposite; the choice is a well thought out decision.

We do not consider hazard as a random process of decision. It can be a convenient term to label an option of an alternative that cannot be verified. For hazard can be either in an oracular form, considered as a mean of divination, or in the form of indifference hazard, considered by science to be imposed by situation. The probability of hazard, in our perspective here, is unfound if laws of probability can be reduced to exact and succinct laws. According to scientific assumption water gushing out of a tap does so in a succinct and precise order where there is no place for hazard. The probability factor can be discarded depending on our unawareness of the order ofhe result. Our lack of knowledge of causes and effects, even in what is geometrically quantifiable, leads to complexity, often paradoxical remains a problem to be resolved. It is prompted by the limits of present knowledge which remains enigmatic: e.g. the Wall of Max Planck; the mystery of matter and time; the wall of death.

Becoming conscious of one’s limits the individual recoils to his faculty of belief. Metaphysical thought has nearly disappeared giving way to scientific knowledge. Scientific concepts of the emergence of auto organization can lead to arguments of probabilities of internal organizing finalities; external finalities cannot be excluded for lack of evidence.

But these probabilities are inherent within the choice alternative. The imposing enigma of existence prompts the question of creation (whether expressed internally or externally) causing a proof dilemma. The necessity of the faculty of judgment as well as the faculty of belief becomes indispensable, where the two, at one level, become identical.

Oscillating between the mecanicist-organicist explanation and the finalist-spiritualist the individual searches for a satisfactory choice to determine his final decision.

 Like his forced existence, his form, structure, aging and death, every person passes through this life-cycle of appearance and disappearance. Interaction between man and the universe necessitates explanation. This explanation necessitates knowledge. The demand for explanation leads to awareness where man attains an uncertain state of comprehension, labeled as knowledge.

‘Ultimate knowledge’, i.e. knowledge of presence, structure, form, origin and finality of objects constituting the universe, remains unknown and inaccessible.

Heidegger, as an example of a materialist, considers that the ‘ultimate horizon of science will not be the representation and comprehension of the real but rather its enslavement by the technological’. The discomfort of the metaphysical order, unverifiable by the science, has incited Kant to think that,

‘speculative reason is not real and has no sense unless in relation to its submission to practical reason which does not seize to produce ends.’

Knowledge, so far, remains, at best, short of attaining ultimate interaction with the universe. It is the result of man’s capacity to acquire data. This data is limited by what the mind can conceive of the sensible and the intelligible. Neither the observer, man, nor the observed, the universe, is accessible to ultimate knowledge at our present state of knowledge.

 Ultimate knowledge is concerned with the nature, structure, form, change, development, presence, origin and finality of the universe and its constituent parts. We are assuming in this work that this presumed inaccessibility to ultimate knowledge is meaningful. It can be permanent without being pessimist. Its significance lies in the fact that we are unable, so far, to unveil ultimate knowledge. The inaccessibility to ultimate knowledge leads to a state of presumed ignorance. This state knowledge blocks its progress. Confronting of ‘assumed ignorance’ is attained only through knowledge, where gradually but surely we recognize it by its dead ends.

We assume further that this presumed ‘state of ignorance’ is ‘inevitable’. Knowing attains a certain point where ultimate his enigma the individual aspires for an explanation. From the need for explanations emerges suppositions of causes that can bring about a universe of such dimensions and exactitude. Lack of proof for or against these suppositions creates a two-fold alternative obliging the observer to make his own choice. At this crossroad man is obliged to choose between belief and disbelief. This choice is presented in a two-options-alternative and does not allow for dialectical synthesis. It is either the one, belief, or the other, disbelief, in a creator-cause.

 No individual can believe and disbelieve at one and the same time. And a synthesis of the two is not possible.

Man himself, as one dimension of matter in time, an expression of life realizes gradually his position in this infinite universe, his role and function. He finds himself in a certain shape and form, size and characteristics. He is endowed with the faculties of survival and comprehension. His innate curiosity leads him to inquire into the enigmatic presence of the universe and his own. Man improvises with knowledge, whether scientific or otherwise: intuitive, telepathic, psychic, Para-psychic, artistic,moral, aesthetic or spiritual or even perceptive (karma), to interpret phenomena and eventualities.

 

Can the scientific mind exclude all precautions relative to finality, by trying to explain it? Can we limit the explanation to science only? Can science satisfy the questioning of meaning posed by philosophers?

How can we explain that starting off from confrontation with phenomenon, i.e. the vitalized object, belief in a cause emerges as alternative?

Philippe Descamps explains that, ‘describing a phenomenon in finalist terms proposes the existenceof a consciousness capable of envisaging the whole and the future, also capable of working out a project that will organize the means of establishing and arranging harmoniously a ‘being’ made up of parts that develops in terms of the totality and contributing through its cooperation to the survival of an organism, we assume that it is animated by an internal finality, this ‘being’ is provided with intention.’ (Science et Avenir, October,2000).

 

The mechanicist explanation by the positivists does not lead to the explanation of the ‘reason of being’ that imposes itself.

In other words the ‘how’ does not explain the ‘why’.

Facing a world already made, and constantly changing, man interrogates himself about it, in its totality and in parts. What is the universe and how did it come about? Is there an architect or is the universe eternal, which does not exclude an architect, as Stephen Hawkins assumes, ‘If there was a Big Bang then there is a God but if the universe is eternal then there is no need for a God.’ For the argument that if the universe is eternal we can very well assume the eternality inaccessible at the present time.

God, as Aristotle suggests in his concept of movement and the prime mover.

If we live in a universe composed of hundreds of billions of galaxies, in which exists hundreds of billions of stars and planets, the field of knowledge is limitless. Man, as a very recent phenomenon, is in his infantile stage of existence and discovery. Planet earth is but one of these infinitely small sparkling spots in our vast system of the Milky Way. The earth, its form and structure, its constituent elements, its presence, its movement and velocity (rotation, tilting, orientation and orbits), its origin (birth, change and development), its position in our solar system, its control, its aging process and its life manifestations, so-called animate and inanimate, confronts man with endless questions. Science is beginning its infinite journey limited to the presence of man.

In this perspective there is no need to presume an already existing sterility of thought. But we are only emphasizing the notion of our present state of a presumed limited accessibility to what can be termed as ultimate knowledge. This can be argued if a state of inaccessibility to ultimate knowledge persists permanently as time passes and man discovers and having the chance to live for a long time. What was before is unknown, where did man come from and what makes us what we are is still unknown. This ultimate knowledge is still unknown.

Science does not provide us with any idea of the structure, presence and origin of any of the two enigmas, matter (or substance) and time. It speculates on the manifestations of the atom, being the smallest constituent particle of matter, offering no knowledge of its nature, presence, origin, cause,its reason of being, its governing laws, its functions and its control. What are atoms? Where do atoms come from? What it is is not within the reach of man.

he does not change its biological-chemical fundamentals according to a pre – order mechanism. The three mediators initiate its presence and controls its form and structure and designs its characteristics? All these questions belong to the domain of knowledge, and in particular, scientific knowledge.

Science, which purports to ‘know’ about the ‘how’, attempts to explain the mechanics of what is and what was. It attempts to discover how conditions are required for the formation of such universal mosaics.

Considering man as a spectator-exploiter, he is unable to create something from nothing. The composition and characteristics of matter itself allows him to use it according to its laws and nature. Such control, which maintains matter as Objects modified genetically presume modification of what is according to the laws that already govern it.

 Isotopes of Plutonium 239 PU existing already in nature are exploited to bring about its potential characteristics. No scientist can pretend to creating from nothing an element or a law of matter. He only discovers the mechanism of splitting atoms and using its energy, for example, that already exists llion DNA characteristics chart already exists in the human body controlling life development structure, form, color, size, change and development. An apple exits, functions and develops according to its already made precise program. Man discovers and discovering its characteristics can develop further its potentialities that are allowed by its own design, but substance; otherwise, it seizes to be what it is and might become, if at all, something else.

Science is unable, so far, to identify empirically the structural nature that prompts such order and what assembles its constituent parts together to produce a final product. that can be a mental seizure, psychological, or moral. Faith or rejection of a cause for the faithless to the assumptions of belief and disbelief. He has, not immune to personal convictions. It is precisely this.

Even though a scientist shows disinterest for finalities he makes his decision and lack of evidence is forced to ultimately, deliberate his choice. In the process of acquiring his knowledge through his investigation the scientist becomes gradually aware of possible inaccessibility, somewhere in his ascendance. He realizes that every discovery opens up for other discoveries, an unlimited chain. This motivates the scientist to continue his work. The perplexity and vastness of the subject leads on to resolve one mystery after another where he comes to a closed sphere of knowledge. Very few people, especially scientists, would admit this. Knowledge is endless, everybody assumes it.

]]>

In any belief-system individual conviction is subject to personal interpretation. The concept of God in each religion differs from one religion to another and specifically from one individual to another. But the overall general concept of belief in response to whether ‘God is’ or ‘is not’, can be commonly shared.

Lack of evidence for the existence of God in religious belief systems results also in the individual choice. The claim of belief in religions is based on linguistic communication.

Whether in belief systems or metaphysics, thought is a process of communicative linguistic expressions that finally leads to expressing one’s convictions. In the case of faith, such symbol system of value judgment is not prerequisite to either belief or disbelief. Direct and immediate acceptance or rejection is prompted upon the confrontation of the faithful with phenomenon (a rose, for example, can prompt such a be the result of a direct seizure of the necessity of a creator or reject faith. This experience, where every person is bound spiritually or psychologically to take a stand. Communicating in symbolic systems such as for example letters, numbers, lines, colors, gesture and sounds, is not always necessary for representing one’s faith which can be intuitive, immediate, direct and wordless, or the rejection subject to, is neither communicable nor transmissible to others.

Symbolic-reference is not necessary in this case. Awareness of a creator-cause can be attained without mediation or meditation nor intellectualization. Man can directly seize the symbolic-reference of an object or an event (a tree, a landscape, a galaxy, orbit of earth). What is inevitable in the mind value-judgment is the individual’s own reckoning of a need, or non-need, for such a belief. Uncertainty of what is prescribed in belief-systems is the pivot-point in these questions. It is the point where an explanation is instigated.

From constant confrontation between man and the universe such a need is prompted. This confrontation triggers off the quest for knowledge indicating a purpose.

 If faith is automatically felt reason can consolidate it only by conjecture. In this case, reason is used to argue for or against faith.

Dependant on the individual’s attitude the choice can be in favor of either one option or the other. For this, absolute freedom of choice is needed in order to make the decision, since there is no evidence to give support to either option.

Tension and harmony between reason and belief has marked distinctions of attitudes throughout the ages. It has been the cause of extremes in attitudes (pros: St. Augustine, Aristotle, Leibniz and cons: Nietzsche, Russell, Sartre) as well as oscillations between metaphysics and scientific objectivism.

Objectivism was brought about through verificationalism and reductionalism (Galilee, Laplace and Descartes) in opposition to the dogmatic teachings of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. or in opposition, due to lack of evidence. This is levels where the two do not meet. They might be in par Scientific knowledge is an empirical symbolic identification that can be parallel to belief but on two different and distinct allelism because the criterion of scientific empiricism cannot apply to systems of belief. The two are completely separated.They can be exploited to consolidate one another, which is often the case (Aristotle, Galilee, Hawkins). The orbit of the earth around the sun cannot be taken as a proof, or as evidence, for the existence of a designer nor as a disproof for such a designer.

For the believer, the orbit needs a cause-designer time-keeper, but the absence of means to verify the need for such a presumption consolidates the argument of the disbeliever.

Both cannot establish an evidence for their arguments but rather can only make a choice. In any way, the individual can not escape belief or disbelief.

The different attitudes of Kant and Heidegger indicate in this sense tension between speculative metaphysics and the impact of science. The discomfort of metaphysical speculation, which is non verifiable by science, has prompted Kant to think that speculative reason is not real and has no sense except with regard to its compliance with practical reason(experience), which in its turn does not stop to provide ends.

Observation does not provide us with significance but it is our value judgment that does so. If a sense of order is figured out by watching natural phenomenon, it is our orientation to recognize such a reaction that allows a sense of order.

Order can be presumed on observing the universe, its form, structure, movement, change and cycles. Albert Einstein mentions, ‘We find in the objective world a high degree of order’. It is claimed by some scientists that if the Big bang was advanced or retarded one split of a trillion of a fraction of evidence, and escapes it by discarding it but ma and life may have never been produced.

A second, the universe would have been in a different shape Galaxies (condensed presumably from a nebula of dust and gas matter) are submitted to rigorous precision of ‘order’ otherwise the universe would have not developed in its present form. Planet earth is constructed in such a way that life in its multiple and complex forms appeared. Conditions of life themselves are submitted to succinct order, control, laws and rigorous discipline. Any perturbation in the conditions of life (lack of oxygen, exposition to ozone zone, important perturbances in atmospheric pressure, density and zone of flora) renders life impossible. Any disorder in the rotation of earth around its axis or its orbits would result in disappearance of life. How does such order work? And what keeps it in control?

 Genetic charts are of an unpaired exactness. Every natural phenomenon is subject to strict laws with relation to its nature, presence, structure, form and function.

The history of knowledge is concerned with the discovery of things and their laws. Such logic implies that if there are laws governing the universe then there must be order. But order and organization and arrangements are indiscernible in the laboratory of the scientist. He faces a wall of the non viability admit it within himself.

The finalist position is rejected by most scientists today, for it is outside the domain of scientific rationalism, but scientific findings are themselves subject to change and uncertainty.

The non evidence assumed by the scientist of the finalist position renders him to reject such a possibility. But can the scientist do away with it altogether. Henri Atlan considers that at the origin of these finalities, bearers of significance, we find, in human societies, contradiction between religious traditional presumptions and scientific knowledge. Likewise; and in the ultimate analysis, scientific knowledge loses its verifiability when ‘ultimate knowledge’ imposes itself exacting the origin, order and organization in material of

science. Certain uncertainty of scientific discoveries remains eminent open to disagreement among scientists, especially to fundamental questioning about matter and origin in micro and macro fields. Science postulates theories subject to verification and change but are limited by the limits of subjectmatter itself. The scientist, although discarding causality from his account, can not avoid the question of causality.

Descamps assumes, with respect to external finality, that an inert object, presented as an organism, or an individual, exists for another end than itself. It is by supposing this that external finality emerges. It is not for the object ‘to be’. In other words, the object itself cannot bring itself about. He does not attribute consciousness to the object itself but, on the contrary, to an external consciousness outside everything an ranscendental to everything. If the domain of explanation is amputated of all forms of finality, and disciplines want to be constituted as science must eliminate finality from its expression. The advent of modern physics and the passage to the conception of an infinite universe have consecrated scientific death of finality, because it imposes the postulate oforganizing thought of the world, is sent back to the ranks of the occult forces. The idea of ‘extra universe finality’, an externality ad infinitum, becomes presumably contradictory, a thing that has to be established. But if an extra universality is dismissed on the postulate of the infinity of the universe then why not postulate that such extra universality is infinite in its turn. Likewise the advent of modern sciences does disprove the existence of such an externality. In fact, both presumptions lack evidence and neither proof nor disproof can be produced in support for the existence, or non existence, of such an externality.

 

 

The starting point of knowledge is that ‘man has to confront with the universe’ and ‘the need to explain it’.

In the first place, we must face scientific explanations of the universe and its constituent parts. The ‘complexity principle’ adopted by Hubert Reeves proclaims a complex structure found already in the constants of the universe since the setting off of the cosmic process. He specifies that, ‘the Universe possesses, right from the first instances, the proprieties requisite to elaborate the complexity’. This can be conceded if we accept the hypothetical assumption of a beginning singularity.

This complexity that has given birth, development and structure to the universe depends on relatively meager number of fundamental constants. Without these constants the universe can neither be nor can be dilated up to its present form already in progression or in digression.

The structure of numerous systems in nature, from the microscopic scale to cosmological scale, is based on the values of this relatively small number of fundamental constants of physics.

The following tables A and B explain this idea:

Permitivity

Table A

The fundamental constants of physics

Quantity Symbol Numeric values

Light speed c 3x10p8 m/sec

Electric charge of

proton

e 1,6x10p-19

coulomb

of

emptiness

eo 8,85x10p-12

farad m-1

Constant of

Planck

h 6,63x10p-34

joule sec

Constant of

Boltzmann

k 1,38x10p-23

joule/K

Mass at rest of

proton

mp 1,67x10p-27 kg

Mass at rest of

electron

me 9,11x10p -31 kg

Constant of the

gravitation

of Newton

G 6,67x10p-11 m3

kg-1 sec-2

Constant of the

weak force

gw 1,43x10p-62

joule m3

Constant of the

strong force

gs 47,4x10p-26m

Length of Planck (Gh/e3)1/2 2x10p-35m

 

 

 

Table B

A modest change in the values of these constants results in a

radical alteration of the structure of the Universe. The

cosmological framework can considerably be transformed, to

the point of being sterile to the emergence of life:

thermonuclear

Diminution Augmentation

Interaction

(Strong)

of the constant of

coupling

-No other nucleus

than oxygen

-No stars, no

carbon

Of the constant

of coupling

-Formation of

heavy

nucleus; no

carbon

Electromagnetic

-No chemical link

possible, so no

complex organic

molecules

-No susceptible

nucleus forming

organic

molecules

Interaction

(Weak)

-Universe

containing only

helium; no water

No cycles of

nuclear reactions

of combustion of

hydrogen

-No supernovae

-No supernovae,

so no ejection of

heavy elements

necessary to the

generation of

living beings

Gravitational -No division of

in

the midst of

interstellar clouds

in contraction

-No supernovae (1)

-Very short

duration of life

of stars;

no planets

 

 

We recognize in these systems, without separating ourselves from the field of science, a kind of immanent finality to the universe, a profound coherence of all its constituent parts.

Science searches for a scientific coherent theory that can explain everything. A unique theory such as the hypothetical Theory of Strings or the hypothetic M-theory (Master theory) enigmas then how can knowledge be considered as knowledge?

that can be able to describe all fundamental interactions of matter and its laws in order to comprehend the secrets of the world from the infinitely small to the infinitely big.

 The attempt, for example, of Stephen Hawkins to unify quantum theory with the Theory of General Relativity is, up to now, non realizable. The Theory of Strings remains also a hypothetical postulate rejected by many scientists.

Descamps mentions that ‘science eliminates finality from its discourse, but this total dismissal on the part of scientific…

______

1. Sciences et Avenir (Journal), Octobre, 2000, Paris, France.

 

 

 …progress inaugurates a new model of phenomena

interpretation: it is of the machine and mechanicism, which discards, in the least rationality i.e. the spiritualist finalist model.’ He considers further, ‘that the mechanicist explanation of the real refinds itself more reinforced and legitimated by the fact that it opens up innumerable possibilities for technical realizations: its scientific richness can thus be measured and this measure is made in the light of its technical applications that it allows.’ (Sciences et Avenir, November, 2000).

The comprehensiveness of man in the universe does not contradict his capacity to take a distance, even in a limited and artificial way, and to apprehend as an observer. In the final analysis, the two phenomena, universe and man, are enigmas that impose itself setting off knowledge. If the two are How did the universe come about and why? How did man come about and why?

These questions belong to the folkloric psychology of every individual. Why should we ask these questions and why should we answer? Where does man’s curiosity lead him to?

And why should there be curiosity at all?

Scientific knowledge maintains that most economy in the means of explanation does not keep into consideration except efficient causes: The principle of sufficient reason by imposing precedent chronologically the phenomenon that is the effect. But if the finality model is excluded from allsciences, certain essential and vital problems remain unresolved.

The science of living things lacks then in satisfactory explanations facing their life behavior in their evolution, development, adaptation and reproduction. In such a life model finality seems to animate its biological objects.

Physics, for example, cannot reduce certain arguments to mechanicist causes, such as the second law of thermodynamics postulating the necessary increase in the entropy of isolated systems. The explanation of lively organisms remains open to finality. Reducing these organisms to automatism or atomism, as the reductionalists and mechanicists assume, takes away the fact that they are lively beings.

 Despite scientific progress science cannot succeed to pierce the wall of this stage of knowledge.

Ultimate knowledge represents the capacity of man to get to know universally, and without any ambiguity of hypothetical thinking, the real and true responses to the answers of fundamental questions: regarding the presence, origin, reason of being, nature and finality of every constituent object and finally the Universe itself, perceptible and intelligible, separately and in unison, as well as the empiric links between

cause and effect, where the ‘enigma’ seizes to be.

However, due to its subjectivity the finality perspective remains open to personal interpretations.

 

For example, if the paper-cutter for Sartre and the statue for Aristotle are fabricated with the intention of a precise function in the mind of its maker, then why stop limiting the logic underlies the concept of existentialism calling for impose itself on man: a point of departure for process to a human maker and not apply it to a natural phenomenon, such as a tree or the sun or even the universe, to a cause-maker? The basis of such a perspective is that we can verify the existence of the human maker but cannot verify the existence of a universe-maker. The universe, can well be argued, is an auto-productive system of auto-dynamism, but the question of what generates such a production and dynamism rests to be validated.

The incapacity of science, at the moment, to provide with such evidence does not annul the probability of a hypothesis of such maker proclaimed by the vitalist-finalist model.

Meanwhile, the tree and the sun, galaxies and the universe are food for knowledge and thought.

We refer to the paper-knife in the example of Sartre’s logic of existentialism. This is an example of reflection, between man and the universe and what a philosopher can conclude in his concept to justify his atheism. The notion of ‘Existentialism’ stems from the example given by Sartre of the paper-knife, but discards the example of a tree because of lack of proof for a maker. Sartre went further in his explanation. He excluded the existence of a ‘maker’ for the paper-knife to find himself only with the ‘paper-knife’, existing on its own, a self-made object, as the basis for his assumption. And hence, the ‘paper- knife’, according to the Sartrian logic, has never had a ‘maker’, and comparatively, so is the world. The logic that the absurdity of being, becomes, at this point, itself absurd. Sartre accepts the presence of the paper-knife but denies the need for a maker-artisan of the paper-knife. He does not explain ‘how’ the paper-cutter came about. This absurdity is precisely the purpose of Sartre’s philosophy of existentialism. In this way man’s existence, according to Sartre, does not need a maker movement, as a ‘necessity of reason’ proclaimed by L’existence and hence does not need a creator-cause, and hence it becomes absurd in presence, in origin and finality. By rendering the world absurd Sartre, by begging his own question, considers it as absurd. The counter question, following his logic, is: how can the paper-knife exist without an artisan conceiving it?

‘The essence’, according to Sartre, does not precede ‘existence’. It is quite the opposite; it is the ‘existence’ that precedes the ‘essence’. This logic is used by Sartre to legitimize his presumption for the absence of a creator cause for the world. By discarding an artisan for the paper-knife he discards a designer for the world.

An easy way, absurd as it is, to do away with a ‘maker’ for the universe is imposed by scientific empiricism, above all the non necessity of such a maker, for the tree itself is already in Nietzsche, as another example when facing the universe, denies ‘order’ and ‘laws’ and assigns the universe to be a product of ‘chaos’ and ‘hazard’, by doing so he gets rid of the need of a ‘creator-cause’.

The individual person when facing the universe and trying to explain it, has the free choice to believe or disbelieve in any causality assumption. The Aristotelian postulate of the ‘prime cause’ prompted by a ‘presumed necessity’ to explain Leibniz and a ‘moral necessity’ proclaimed by Kant.

The five assumptions of Sartre, Nietzsche, Aristotle, Leibniz and Kant represent personal convictions.

If we admit the finality of a house is habitation and the finality of medical science is healing, we cannot then exclude theoretical hypothesizing about finality for natural phenomenon, atmospheric pressure, water and the sun, life and Man.

 The scientific taboo is found between the maker of intentional finality, in objects made by man that are subject to verification, and a presumed maker of natural phenomenon, a presumption eliminated from explanation.

The postulated argument of St. Augustine identifying ‘reason with revelation’ remains, at best, a personal conviction, and not subject to verification. Logic here submits the idea of the existence of a God, depicted in the Scriptures, to human reason. Such an exercise, very frequently used in the history of religious thought (often drawing support from Aristotelian metaphysical presumptions), attempts to justify statements of the Scriptures according to monotheistic assertions. The attempt is only intellectually hypothetical. Should there be the least index of its proclamations the whole humanity has already found its way for an explanation. Lack of evidence becomes the pivot of the attitude of men. Any evidence, for or against the existence of a designer-cause, annuls immediately any belief system.

The argument of the existence of the universe vis-à-vis the non existence of the universe as a comparative-contrastive index appeals to reason by begging the question. The nihilist, the skeptic, and the one who doubts, as well as the agnostic, can reduce this argument to nullity. All depends which side the individual has chosen.

Through the enigmatic presence of the universe and man we seem to be in perpetual lack of knowledge.

 Our present knowledge is suspended as ever between these two enigmas. In this respect, we do not consider as valid the assumption of Jacques Monot of using the term ‘teleonomy’ to denote ‘non-intentional finality characterizing the integrated functioning of biological unit’.

 It is a contradiction in terms, since hazard is present as alternative. Therefore; if, and only if, hazard is the cause of finality, even if finality is non intentional, it seizes to be hazard. It becomes calculating intelligence of decisive control leading to order. Mechanical causality explains the mechanism of relations without attempting to explain the instigating factor of such causality, nor of the nature of force of its assumed control, of the animated aspect. If the auto-mechanism is considered as the instigating factor for the universe, it remains to explain the instigating factor itself.

Can we explain phenomena by mechanical causality only, if we demand for the ‘how’, particularly, in explaining biological phenomena? A man, or a lizard, cannot be a mechanical robot and a tree as well cannot only be a productive machine. Reducing everything to atomistic mechanics leaves the question open to its presence, its origin, form and structure, its laws, its controlling system and the instigating power, the motor of its mechanical functioning.

This idea can be valid in explaining the mechanism of phenomena, already in existence, but does not explain its very existence and why such mechanism should function.

 Scientific verificationalism rejects metaphysical speculations as non subject to empiricism. But, facing a phenomenon, the scientist is forced to take a stand towards these questions. He can either believe in a causal finality or reject it. The fact remains valid that lacking the establishment of any links between the universe and a presumed finality leaves the question open to individual convictions, and the scientist is no exception. Any individual, whether a scientist or not, may oscillate between causal finalities and scientific mechanicism, but has to make his decision either way. He cannot believe in causality and reject it at one and the same time.

 If finality, internal or external, can be identified and indicates that ‘intentional action leads to a purpose’, and that finality is ‘the final cause determining the presence and maturity of an object, we can demand why is it the case?

If we accept the argument of a believer in external finality and things are made for an external purpose, then man ought to serve a cause other than himself; an inadmitted cause by science and a metaphysical presumption.

The encounter between man and phenomenon sets off the process of thinking leading to an inevitable end: a choice.’ It is to this end we attributesense. The end of a human being is to procreate or to die, forexample, but the fact of reproducing as well as death is linkedin a precisely defined cycle manifested in terms of a beginning, a course and an end. This cycle can suggest a precise finality. Our interest here concerns man as finality by himself before his death, although subject to it, and his confronting with the universe has this end.

Man’s knowledge is one way to enable him to choose. He can choose directly by other means, faith or belief without reference to knowledge. But we consider that the ultimate purpose of knowledge is to enable man to choose. Surviving ensures man’s presence to acquire enough knowledge in order to choose.

‘Each time a new discovery is made we come a little bit closer to reality’, asserts Karl Popper. If we accept the presumption of the two-fold enigma namely, man and the universe then the probability of a third enigma, namely a designer externality emerges. Dismissal altogether of such probability does not deny the probability of the choice but confirms it.

If science rejects finality as non-verifiable, finality remains insistent by the phenomenon of motivation of things, simply by becoming what they are. The embryo develops in such a precise schematic totality that is realized in the finality of man adult and mature.

The cause, whether mechanic or non-mechanic, remains an unknown factor to be resolved, being afinal cause or an efficient one.

The universe forces itself upon our mind to produce a never ending process of interactions where we are obliged to know.

Knowledge motivates us to search for explanations, whether for immediate utility or a far fetched one. Knowledge becomes fully meaningful when it allows man, by giving him the means of decision, to choose between finality and mechanism, in response to his natural drive for an explanation of his own existence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: ArticlesBase.com

Knowledge Based Economy

Knowledge Based Economy

 

 

For the last two hundred years, neo-classical economics has recognised only two factors of production: labour and capital. This is now changing. Information and knowledge are replacing capital and energy as the primary wealth-creating assets, just as the latter two replaced land and labor 200 years ago. In addition, technological developments in the 20th century have transformed the majority of wealth-creating work from physically-based to “knowledge-based.” Technology and knowledge are now the key factors of production. With increased mobility of information and the global work force, knowledge and expertise can be transported instantaneously around the world, and any advantage gained by one company can be eliminated by competitive improvements overnight. The only comparative advantage a company will enjoy will be its process of innovation–combining market and technology know-how with the creative talents of knowledge workers to solve a constant stream of competitive problems–and its ability to derive value from information. We are now an information society in a knowledge economy where knowledge management is essential. This page lists and rates Internet resources related to the field of knowledge based economy and knowledge management in the new information society.

 

 

“We are living through a period of profound change and transformation of the shape of society and its underlying economic base … The nature of production, trade, employment and work in the coming decades will be very different from what it is today.”

 

In an agricultural economy land is the key resource. In an industrial economy natural resources, such as coal and iron ore, and labour are the main resources. A knowledge economy is one in which knowledge is the key resource. It is not a new idea that knowledge plays an important role in the economy, nor is it a new fact. All economies, however simple, are based on knowledge about how, for example, to farm, to mine and to build; and this use of knowledge has been increasing since the Industrial Revolution. But the degree of incorporation of knowledge and information into economic activity is now so great that it is inducing quite profound structural and qualitative changes in the operation of the economy and transforming the basis of competitive advantage. The rising knowledge intensity of the world economy and our increasing ability to distribute that knowledge have increased its value to all participants in the economic system. The implications of this are profound, not only for the strategies of firms and for the policies of government but also for the institutions and systems used to regulate economic behaviour.

 

 

“Capitalism is undergoing an epochal transformation from a mass production system where the principal source of value was human labour to a new era of ‘innovation mediated production’ where the principal component of value creation, productivity and economic growth is knowledge.”

 

 

Defining the knowledge economy is challenging precisely because the commodity it rests on “knowledge” is itself hard to pin down with any precision. Perhaps for this reason there are few definitions that go much beyond the general and hardly any that describe the knowledge economy in ways that might allow it to be measured and quantified.
# The knowledge economy is a vague term that refers either to an economy of knowledge focused on the production and management of knowledge, or a knowledge-based economy. In the second meaning, more frequently used, it refers to the use of knowledge to produce economic benefits.

 

# The knowledge economy is the story of how new technologies have combined with intellectual and knowledge assets – the “intangibles” of research, design, development, creativity, education, brand equity and human capital – to transform our economy.
The Knowledge Economy is emerging from two defining forces: the rise in knowledge intensity of economic activities, and the increasing globalisation of economic affairs.

 

The rise in knowledge intensity is being driven by the combined forces of the information technology revolution and the increasing pace of technological change. Globalisation is being driven by national and international deregulation, and by the IT related communications revolution.

 

However, it is important to note that the term ‘Knowledge Economy’ refers to the overall economic structure that is emerging, not to any one, or combination of these phenomena. Various observers describe today’s global economy as one in transition to a “knowledge economy”, as an extension of “information society”. The transition requires that the rules and practices that determined success in the industrial economy need rewriting in an interconnected, globalised economy where knowledge resources such as know-how, expertise, and intellectual property are more critical than other economic resources such as land, natural resources, or even manpower.

 

According to analysts of the “knowledge economy,” these rules need to be rewritten at the levels of firms and industries in terms of knowledge management and at the level of public policy as knowledge policy or knowledge-related policy.

 

 

A key concept of this sector of economic activity is that knowledge and education (often referred to as “human capital”) can be treated as:
• A business product, as educational and innovative intellectual products and services can be exported for a high value return.
• A productive asset.

 

The initial foundation for the Knowledge Economy was first introduced in 1966 in a book by Peter Drucker. The Effective Executive described the difference between the Manual worker and the knowledge worker. A manual worker works with his hands and produces “stuff”. A knowledge worker works with his or her head not hands, and produces ideas, knowledge, and information.

 

 

It can be argued that the knowledge economy differs from the traditional economy in several key respects:

 

• The economics is not of scarcity, but rather of abundance. Unlike most resources that deplete when used, information and knowledge can be shared, and actually grow through application.

•The effect of location is either diminished, in some economic activities: using appropriate technology and methods, virtual marketplaces and virtual organizations that offer benefits of speed, agility, round the clock operation and global reach can be created . or, on the contrary, reinforced in some other economic fields, by the creation of business clusters around centres of knowledge, such as universities and research centres having reached world-wide excellence.

 

• Laws, barriers and taxes are difficult to apply on solely a national basis. Knowledge and information “leak” to where demand is highest and the barriers are lowest.

 

• Knowledge enhanced products or services can command price premiums over comparable products with low embedded knowledge or knowledge intensity.

 

• Pricing and value depends heavily on context. Thus the same information or knowledge can have vastly different value to different people, or even to the same person at different times.

 

• Knowledge when locked into systems or processes has higher inherent value than when it can “walk out of the door” in people’s heads.

 

• Human capital — competencies — are a key component of value in a knowledge-based company, yet few companies report competency levels in annual reports. In contrast, downsizing is often seen as a positive “cost cutting” measure.

 

• Communication is increasingly being seen as fundamental to knowledge flows. Social structures, cultural context and other factors influencing social relations are therefore of fundamental importance to knowledge economies.
These characteristics require new ideas and approaches from policy makers, managers and knowledge workers.

 

 

Commentators suggest that at least three interlocking driving forces are changing the rules of business and national competitiveness:

 

• Globalization — markets and products are more global.

 

• Information/Knowledge Intensity — efficient production relies on information and know-how; over 70 per cent of workers in developed economies are information workers; many factory workers use their heads more than their hands.

 

• Computer networking and Connectivity developments such as the Internet bring the “global village” ever nearer.

 

As concerns the applications of any new technology, it depends how it meets economic demand. It can stay dormant or get a commercial breakthrough.

 

 

The other main driver of the emerging knowledge economy is the rapid globalisation of economic activities. While there have been other periods of relative openness in the world economy, the pace and extent of the current phase of globalisation is without precedent.
The global communications revolution has been accompanied by a widespread movement to economic deregulation, including

 

# the reduction of tariff and non-tariff barriers on trade in both goods and services; the floating of currencies and deregulation of financial markets more generally;

 

# the reduction of barriers to foreign direct investment and other international capital flows, and of barriers to technology transfers; and

 

# the deregulation of product markets in many countries, particularly in terms of the reduction in the power of national monopolies in areas such as telecommunications, air transport and the finance and insurance industries.
Together these changes have led to rapid globalisation. As a result, goods and services can be developed, bought, sold, and in many cases even delivered over electronic networks.

 

 

The last twenty years have seen an explosion in the application of computing and communications technologies in all areas of business and community life. This explosion has been driven by sharp falls in the cost of computing and communications per unit of performance, and by the rapid development of applications relevant to the needs of users. Digitalization, open systems standards, and the development software and supporting technologies for the application of new computing and communications systems – including scanning and imaging technologies, memory and storage technologies, display systems and copying technologies – are now helping users realise the potential of the IT revolution. It is in the Internet that these technologies come together, and it is the Internet phenomenon that exemplifies the IT revolution. Over the first decade of its development the Internet remained a specialist research network. By 1989 there were 159,000 Internet hosts worldwide. Now, just 10 years later, there are more than 43 million.

 

In economic terms, the central feature of the IT revolution is the ability to manipulate, store and transmit large quantities of information at very low cost. An equally important feature of these technologies is their pervasiveness. While earlier episodes of technical change have centered on particular products or industrial sectors, information technology is generic. It impacts on every element of the economy, on both goods and services; and on every element of the business chain, from research and development to production, marketing and distribution.

 

Because the marginal cost of manipulating, storing and transmitting information is virtually zero, the application of knowledge to all aspects of the economy is being greatly facilitated, and the knowledge intensity of economic activities greatly increased. This increasing knowledge intensity involves both the increasing knowledge intensity of individual goods and services, and the growing importance of those goods and services in the economy.

 

 

It is virtually impossible to separate technology from the act of living in today¹s world. We are all connected to our work, to our product and service providers, and to each other in myriad ways that could never have been predicted just ten years ago. Out of this vast degree of interconnectivity spring networks – and nodes of contact within networks – that add momentum to the pace of still more technological opportunities and developments. It is an undeniable fact that ICTs play a very important role in the development of every nation these days. This is because growth is induced by the flow of information and this realization has led most economies into knowledge based ones. Developing countries have realized this and are rigorously pursuing the use of ICTs as a platform for socio-economic development.

 

Electronic commerce (e-commerce) is a rapidly growing segment of the economy, which is expected to increase yet more rapidly over the next few years. Current internet commercial transactions are estimated at hundreds of millions and are projected for billions within the decade. The growth of net transacted revenues will be energized with Visa and MasterCard’s release of secure software standards for their card members’ internet transactions, and the acceptance of standards for micropricing. All in all, it is reasonable to project that, in a decade’s time, the vast majority of economic transactions will involve a significant electronic component. Business is experiencing a significant transition. This transition is based on the fact that we are now in a networked environment. ICT can bring business transformation, changing work environments and global economy. Advent of the “new economy”, embodied by the expansion of the internet, would be the signal of the end of geography and space. Distances are reportedly abolished as markets are from now on at a click away.

]]>

 

 

Various management writers have for several years highlighted the role of knowledge or intellectual capital in business. The value of high-tech companies such as software and biotechnology companies, is not in physical assets as measured by accountants, but in their intangibles such as knowledge and patents. The last few years have a growing recognition by accounting bodies and international agencies that knowledge is a crucial factor of production. For example, the OECD has groups investigating ‘human capital’ and also the role of knowledge in international competitiveness.

 

 

The evolving knowledge economy has important implications for policy makers of local, regional and national government as well as international agencies and institutions e.g.:
• Traditional measures of economic success must be supplemented by new ones
• Economic Development policy should focus not on ‘jobs created’ but rather on infrastructure for sustainable ‘knowledge enhancement’ that acts as a magnet for knowledge-based companies.
• Develop regulation and taxation for information and knowledge trading at international level, looking to future knowledge-based industries rather than traditional industries.
• Stimulate market development through new forms of collaboration.

 

 

The main challenges facing policy makers and business leaders are the following:
• It is difficult to ‘go it alone’. Stakeholders, especially employees and business partners must share similar views for your own initiatives to succeed
• alone recognition and reward systems usually do not sufficiently recognise recognizee contributions. They are linked to performance measures of the traditional economy.
• Measures of return on investment are done using traditional accounting methods, thus investments in knowledge enhancing activities need strong advocates at senior levels.

 

 

The emergence of the knowledge economy can be characterised in terms of the increasing role of knowledge as a factor of production and its impact on skills, learning, organisation and innovation.
• There is an enormous increase in the codification of knowledge, which together with networks and the digitalisation of information, is leading to its increasing commodification.
• Increasing codification of knowledge is leading to a shift in the balance of the stock of knowledge – leading to a relative shortage of tacit knowledge.

 

• Codification is promoting a shift in the organisation and structure of production.

 

• Information and communication technologies increasingly favour the diffusion of information over re-invention, reducing the investment required for a given quantum of knowledge.

 

• The increasing rate of accumulation of knowledge stocks is positive for economic growth (raising the speed limit to growth). Knowledge is not necessarily exhausted in consumption.

 

• Codification is producing a convergence, bridging different areas of competence, reducing knowledge dispersion, and increasing the speed of turnover of the stock of knowledge.

 

• The innovation system and its ‘knowledge distribution power’ are critically important.

 

• The increased rate of codification and collection of information are leading to a shift in focus towards tacit (‘handling’) skills.

 

• Learning is increasingly central for both people and organisations.

 

• Learning involves both education and learning-by-doing, learning-by-using and learning-by-interacting.

 

• Learning organisations are increasingly networked organisations.

 

• Initiative, creativity, problem solving and openness to change are increasingly important skills.

 

• The transition to a knowledge-based system may make market failure systemic.

 

• A knowledge-based economy is so fundamentally different from the resource based system of the last century that conventional economic understanding must be re-examined.

 

 

“In the 21st century, comparative advantage will become much less a function of natural resource endowments and capital-labour ratios and much more a function of technology and skills. Mother nature and history will play a much smaller role, while human ingenuity will play a much bigger role.”

 

What makes the emergence of the knowledge economy important is that it is, in some significant respects, different from the industrial economy we have known for most of the last 200 years. Those differences include the following:

 

 

The IT revolution has intensified the move towards knowledge codification, and increased the share of codified knowledge in the knowledge stock of advanced economies. All knowledge that can be codified and reduced to information can now be transmitted around the world at relatively little cost. Hence, knowledge is acquiring more of the properties of a commodity. Market transactions are facilitated by codification, and the diffusion of knowledge is accelerated. Codification is also reducing the importance of additional, duplicative investments in acquiring knowledge. It is creating bridges between fields and areas of competence and reducing the ‘dispersion’ of knowledge. These developments promise an acceleration of the rate of growth of stocks of accessible knowledge, with positive implications for economic growth.

 

 

Information and communication technologies have greatly reduced the cost and increased the capacity of organisations to codify knowledge, process and communicate information. In doing so they have radically altered the ‘balance’ between codified and tacit knowledge in the overall stock of knowledge. In essence, creating a shortage of tacit knowledge. As access to information becomes easier and less expensive, the skills and competencies relating to the selection and efficient use of information become more crucial, and tacit knowledge in the form of the skills needed to handle codified knowledge becomes more important than ever.

 

Information and communication technology investments are complementary with investment in human resources and skills. The skills required of humans will increasingly be those that are complementary with information and communication technology; not those that are substitutes. Whereas machines replaced labour in the industrial era, information technology will be the locus of codified knowledge in the knowledge economy, and work in the knowledge economy will increasingly demand uniquely human (tacit) skills – such as conceptual and inter-personal management and communication skills.

 

 

The knowledge economy increasingly relies on the diffusion and use of knowledge, as well as its creation. Hence the success of enterprises, and of national economies as a whole, will become more reliant upon their effectiveness in gathering, absorbing and utilising knowledge, as well as in its creation.
A knowledge economy is, in effect, a hierarchy of networks, driven by the acceleration of the rate of change and the rate of learning, where the opportunity and capability to get access to and join knowledge-intensive and learning-intensive relations determines the socio-economic position of individuals and firms.13 Firms must become learning organisations, continuously adapting management, organisation and skills to accommodate new technologies and grasp new opportunities. They will be increasingly joined in networks, where interactive learning involving creators, producers and users in
experimentation and exchange of information drives innovation.

 

 

In a knowledge economy, firms search for linkages to promote inter-firm interactive learning, and for outside partners and networks to provide complementary assets. These relationships help firms spread the costs and risks associated with innovation, gain access to new research results, acquire key technological components, and share assets in manufacturing, marketing and distribution. As they develop new products and processes, firms determine which activities they will undertake individually, which in collaboration with other firms, which in collaboration with universities or research institutions, and which with the support of government. Innovation is thus the result of numerous interactions between actors and institutions, which together form an innovation system.

 

Those innovation systems consist of the flows and relationships, which exist among industry, government and academia in the development of science and technology. And the interactions within these systems influence the innovative performance of firms and ultimately of the economy. The ‘knowledge distribution power’ of the system, or its capability to ensure timely access by innovators to relevant stocks of knowledge, is therefore a major determinant of prosperity.

 

 

The Indian vision of a knowledge-based economy will be realised only when it is based on the foundation of a robust industrial economy. To be truly beneficial, the rain of IT must fall at the right place, in the right quantity, at the right time and for the right purpose.

 

THE Indian software industry has compiled an impressive track record over the past decade. Entrepreneurs, bureaucrats and politicians are now advancing views about how India can transform itself into a knowledge-based economy by riding the information technology (IT) bandwagon. Isolated instances of villagers using e-mail are cited as examples of such transformation. Likewise, e-governance is being projected as the way of the future.

 

There is no dearth of fascinating stories about IT-enabled changes. But, there is little discussion about whether such changes are sustainable and effective when other areas of the economy continue to lag. For example, 79 per cent of India’s population lives in villages with limited basic infrastructure. Over 60 per cent of the population is considered literate, but with literacy being defined as the ability to read and write simple words in any language, acquired with or without formal schooling. This criterion is so basic, that it is almost irrelevant in the context of a knowledge economy. Yet, Central and State governments have projected IT as a vehicle for social and economic transformation. Are we putting the cart before the horse here? Even if the focus on IT is justifiable, how must IT policy be designed so that the nation is benefited in a balanced way?

 

In this commentary, we discuss the implications of India’s intensive focus on the IT sector. We argue that India should aggressively pursue manufacturing- and agriculture-based industries to build a robust industrial economy that can be made more efficient with IT. IT projects can certainly be pursued within the private sector. However, government policy should not be heavily skewed in favour of the IT industry when its benefits to society are unclear and when its role within the broader framework of national development has not been adequately articulated. Further, policy-makers should moderate their obsession with IT as a panacea for India’s socio-economic problems.

 

 

The value of IT depends greatly on the existing level of economic development. IT can make existing assets and processes more effective and efficient, but cannot compensate for the lack of a basic infrastructure. What is appropriate for a developed economy is not necessarily appropriate for India, where basic elements of infrastructure including quality education, healthcare, electricity and drinking water remain in short supply.

 

The impact of IT is best understood when the differences between industrial and knowledge-intensive ventures are recognised. Industrial growth derives from investments in large-scale infrastructure (such as railways, roadways, power grids and dams). Such infrastructure supports the growth of physical-asset intensive industries (such as the steel and transportation industries) that create and move physical entities (such as goods, water and people). These ventures employ numerous workers with limited education and skills, and can uplift large sections of society.

 

In contrast, ventures in the knowledge economy usually involve the production of knowledge-intensive goods (like software), and the large-scale capture, movement and utilization of information using sophisticated network infrastructure (such as computers, cable, fibre and routers). Beyond the physical labour required for initial construction, building and maintaining such infrastructure requires specialized knowledge.

 

Despite the hype of the “new economy”, the fact is that economic development is cumulative. The industrial economy made agriculture more productive. The productivity of agricultural labour skyrocketed with the use of industrial and biological innovations including tractors, irrigation systems, fertilizers, pesticides and genetically engineered seeds. Historically, industrial innovation in developed economies has created great wealth and improved living standards across societal divides. This progress has set them up in an ideal position to create and exploit knowledge as they transform into knowledge-based economies. Crucially, the greatest source of productivity and growth attributed to the knowledge economy derives not from the knowledge economy itself, but from its effects on the industrial economy. For example, IT can enable supply chains and factories to work more efficiently.

 

The “leapfrogging” argument, whereby India skips heavy infrastructure building and transforms directly into a knowledge economy, is therefore suspect. Proponents of leapfrogging describe how isolated villages without conventional telephones have directly adopted cellular phones. The example provides excellent symbolism. However, the underlying principle is not scalable to the level of the national economy where many complex sub-systems work together. Consider the transportation sub-system. The laws of physics do not allow IT to substitute the physical movement of goods by a “virtual” movement. A lightning-fast information network will not in itself help achieve faster and cheaper transport. Better roadways and railways will.

 

 

Indian IT firms have focussed on developing and delivering IT services to advanced economies. Even if India became the world’s software factory and the most optimistic projections of IT-related jobs (including jobs in call centres and design centres) were upheld, this industry will employ at most a few million people. In a nation with over a billion people, this constitutes but a dent in the employment statistics.

 

Further, a social planner should be concerned not just with the creation of wealth, but also with its distribution across social divides. The IT industry holds limited potential for wealth to trickle down to the poorer sections of society. Unlike a steel plant, IT engenders few opportunities for the uneducated. Any transfer of wealth from the IT sector (for example, by taxing the IT sector to fund social spending) would be achieved through the heavy hand of government.. In fact, the rapid growth of IT will likely lead to a digital divide in the short term, where the rich and educated are empowered and enriched by IT and the poor are oblivious to its impact.
Before embracing IT, Indian policy planners must carefully evaluate whether investments in other areas would yield higher, and more equitable, returns. For example, consider the jute industry.

 

The country needs to be particularly careful not to give short shrift to the manufacturing sector. China is not known for its strengths in IT, although it now has some presence in the area. But, what China has accomplished in terms of its core industrial base is striking. Foreign direct investment (FDI) in China was of the order of billion in 2000 despite all the noise about alleged labour and human rights abuses. Chinese exports exceeded 0 billion in 2000, with the United States alone accounting for 0 billion of these exports. In fact, the value of “footwear” exported annually by China to the U.S. (worth about .2 billion) itself compares with or even exceeds the total value of India’s annual IT exports.

 

Why are these numbers relevant? Exporting footwear creates millions of jobs for citizens who lack sophisticated skills. According to some reports, a total of 34 million export-related jobs have been created in China, with exports to the U.S. alone accounting for over 20 million jobs in the last decade. These jobs have improved living standards for a substantial fraction of Chinese society. There is much we need to learn from China about how the manufacturing sector can deliver robust and equitable economic growth. Taiwan, Malaysia and South Korea have also flourished using similar approaches.

 

In contrast with manufacturing, the direct benefits to IT (such as employment in IT jobs) are likely to flow to the few who already have the benefits of education. The trickle-down effects of IT (such as cleaning and maintenance staff for IT firms) are likely to be modest or non-existent outside the large cities. It is also time to discard the notion that the manufacturing sector is inherently less appealing because it may involve some physical labour.

 

In the more advanced economies, a skilled factory floor worker is frequently paid more than a call-centre employee. Empowered with technology, the factory worker can add value at a remarkable rate. In India, the reverse often holds. Mundane call-centre jobs, often outsourced from more developed economies, absorb well-educated, English-speaking workers whose abilities could be employed much more productively elsewhere.

 

The actions of governments in India tend to be biased in favour of the IT sector.. The government needs a more balanced policy, one that ensures that the core industrial sector is not ignored in the rush toward IT.

 

 

IT is fashionable to say that India’s population constitutes its greatest asset. This viewpoint is misleading. People are assets only when they participate meaningfully in the cycle of value creation and consumption by exercising buying power, or creating products and services of value, or by creating and harnessing knowledge. A large fraction of India’s population does not meet, or even come close to, this asset standard. To transform such a situation, a renewed focus is required on the two pillars that have supported the growth of every successful economy – a strong infrastructure core and widespread access to education. Now to discuss the IT-education interface.

 

 

Distance learning and e-learning are already being flaunted in some quarters as solutions to India’s education challenges. The argument proffered is that IT can enable the cheap and widespread delivery of education. This reasoning ignores the key challenge – how can the children of the poor and the uneducated be provided with the incentives to come to school, stay in school, and progress to higher institutions of learning? The answer lies in understanding physiology, psychology and economics, rather than in implementing technology. For all its drawbacks and implementation problems, the mid-day meal programme launched by the late Chief Minister M.G. Ramachandran in Tamil Nadu addressed this challenge head on. The programme recognised a simple, but fundamental, fact – the brain cannot feed when the stomach itself is unfed. It provided parents with the incentive to send their children to schools, rather than to the fields. For the children to whom the benefits of education seemed like a distant, hazy mirage, it provided an immediate, tangible reason to stay in school.

 

There is little reason to believe that IT-based learning will advance meaningfully the cause of Indian education. Problems that are enmeshed in the social and economic fabric of Indian society need to be addressed primarily with solutions that are of a social and economic nature. Throwing technology at these problems will not make them go away.

 

In addition, creating the infrastructure and content to support effective e-learning is very expensive. A rush into e-learning at this stage will only lead to squandered resources.

 

 

A Knowledge Economy is characterised by a culture of innovation. For such a culture to take root, innovation must be rewarded and intellectual property must be protected.

 

A culture that truly enhances innovation supports the view that to try hard and fail is perfectly fine. Yet, the Indian psyche has historically been averse to blessing the risky venture. This attitude transcends into the corporate arena. Consider how static the Indian automobile industry was for three decades before the refreshing winds of competition brought about rapid change. Competition breeds innovation.

 

While one side of the cultural coin pertains to the incentives for innovation, the flip side pertains to its protection. Ideas, unlike property, cannot be protected by building a fence around them. Intellectual property protection is not a purely economic issue; it also has important cultural dimensions. The economic angle can be addressed with stronger patent laws and punitive procedures. However, the cultural angle will decide whether such protection can be enforced meaningfully. Addressing the cultural angle is a challenge.

 

 

A society that is deeply divided by social and economic fissures must think carefully about how it achieves economic and technological advance. The path, in some ways, is more important than the outcome itself.

 

In the Indian context, particular attention needs to be paid to when, where, and in what form IT and other technological advances are encouraged. There are, indeed, many low-hanging fruits to be harvested. For example, a recent article in The New York Times described how a fisherman working off the coasts of Kerala used a cellphone on the seas to obtain information about spot market prices for fish at Kochi and Kollam. The fisherman netted the equivalent of an additional ,000 in annual income merely by deciding to deliver his catch to the more remunerative market each time his boat came in. This striking example of how simple information flows can enhance market efficiency can be replicated in many ways, and in many markets. However, the stakes are quite different when it comes to the formulation of a national IT policy. Any national policy requires some trade-offs between the benefits to industrial sectors, regions and classes of people. In formulating a national IT policy, the quest for superior technology must be moderated by an understanding of its implications at the social level – what might be good for a private company or an entrepreneur may not always be good for society and vice-versa

 

Successful technology adoption will move in measured steps, at a pace and in a direction that are in harmony with changes in the socio-economic fabric. The role of the government in ensuring such harmony should not be underestimated. This is especially true in India where the government remains responsible for a significant fraction of the economic output, and where it is actively reshaping rules and regulations as the country integrates into the global economy.

 

Information technology can change the way a society communicates, collaborates, lives, works and plays. The growth of the IT sector in India symbolises the potential of Indian industry to perform at world-class standards. This success demonstrates much of what can go right when the spirit of human enterprise is given free rein.

 

However, the success of IT at the corporate level in India cannot solve its myriad economic and social challenges. Just as copious rainfall can lead to dramatic floods, an obsession with IT and the knowledge economy is not useful. To be truly beneficial, the rain of IT must fall at the right place in the right quantity, at the right time and for the right purpose. Neither does the aggressive pursuit of IT represent the sole, or even an obvious, pathway to a first class economy despite the glowing success of high-profile IT companies.

 

 

For the last two hundred years, neo-classical economics has recognised only two factors of production: labour and capital. This is now changing. Information and knowledge are replacing capital and energy as the primary wealth-creating assets, just as the latter two replaced land and labor 200 years ago. In addition, technological developments in the 20th century have transformed the majority of wealth-creating work from physically-based to “knowledge-based.” Technology and knowledge are now the key factors of production. With increased mobility of information and the global work force, knowledge and expertise can be transported instantaneously around the world, and any advantage gained by one company can be eliminated by competitive improvements overnight. The only comparative advantage a company will enjoy will be its process of innovation–combining market and technology know-how with the creative talents of knowledge workers to solve a constant stream of competitive problems–and its ability to derive value from information. We are now an information society in a knowledge economy where knowledge management is essential. This page lists and rates Internet resources related to the field of knowledge based economy and knowledge management in the new information society.

Source: ArticlesBase.com