Innovation Ecosystem the Knowledge Networked Organization

In any innovation ecosystem, the ways in which organizations manage knowledge this millennium will be a function of those forces that will shape the organization. The critical element of the organization will be the dominance of knowledge as a factor of production. We see a shift from a mass manufacturing economy to a knowledge-based economy. The new economy thrives on knowledge workers who perform complex and highly skilled jobs. The Knowledge Networking (KN) initiative focuses on the integration of knowledge from different sources and domains across space and time. Modern computing and communications systems provide the infrastructure to send bits anywhere, anytime in mass quantities. In this case, we have connectivity, but in a Knowledge Networked Organization (KNO), we are also interested in interactivity and integration. In an effective and efficient KNO, we aim to move beyond connectivity to achieve new levels of interactivity, increasing the semantic bandwidth, knowledge bandwidth, activity bandwidth, and cultural bandwidth among people, organizations, and communities.

In this paper, I will try to present a topology and a general architecture of a Knowledge Networked Organization. Clear trends/shifts which will set the knowledge management agenda for KNOs in the New Millennium will also be highlighted in the paper.