Understanding and Living in the Knowledge Economy

What happened to create 21st century conditions?

• Technology advances and education levels of workers have had unprecedented growth.

What trends were created?

• The Internet has enabled mobility, connectivity, generational gaps, globalization, and data and information access and availability.

What changed in the economy?

• Knowledge is the new currency, and so we have a knowledge economy.

How do people need to accommodate the change?

• People need specific skills to be able to process and leverage information available for new value creation.

What is the basis for processing information & knowledge as it becomes available?

• The context for analyzing data effectively is to understand and balance the needs of all three customers: your external customers, your employees, and your owners.

What skills are needed to master the knowledge economy?

• Knowledge workers must: be autonomous, be assets to their operations, be task/results oriented, continuously evaluate and learn, build quality and quantity of results as needed.

How does an organization support knowledge workers?

• Build an environment that expects and rewards knowledge work. Record and store needed data and information so it is available. Use a workshop approach to engage, empower, and enable all members in this new mode of work.