“Knowledge has become the key resource for sustainable competitive advantage"
In the current Covid-19 disruption – Organisations must adapt to ongoing changes by exploring new business opportunities to close or exceed the capability gap between their competitors, where even the slightest margin can make the difference in closing the deal.
Differences between companies exist due to their stock of knowledge and their ability to utilise and develop knowledge, whereas competitive advantage arises from their organisational capabilities to use knowledge for value creation.
“The more knowledge is used the more valuable and less costly it becomes”.
To succeed now and in the future, organisations must embrace and improve their innovation capabilities, which were defined by Kirsimarja Blomqvist and Aino Kianto as abilities to:
"However, the knowledge that can be imitated or duplicated cannot provide sustainable competitive advantage nor does latent knowledge or unused knowledge create any value"
On a program level, innovation capabilities are measured through continuous learning, relentless improvement and innovation, by embodying meaningful internal and external intrinsic knowledge into the program organisation and to develop improved or new products, services and procedures.
To take advantage of the knowledge economy, containing diversified and rapidly changing customer expectations and needs, organisations should study comprehensively their current internal and external network for co-creation opportunities.
Several co-creation platforms have been created, where collaboration takes place over organisational boundaries and even between competitors. The strengths of these networks are based on social interactions, lean agile development practices and principles, information sharing, leadership and the ability to exploit time. Value is created when the extended network combines information with business knowledge for decision making and innovations.
Manufacturing and Maritime businesses have tapped into the network power, by co-creating an open innovation platform and ecosystem to shorten the time to commercialize a product or service.
As a result, new joint venture and start-ups have been established that can exploit and expand the co-creation ecosystem, these, in turn, have been extensively funded by the government-owned Business Finland, which is the most important public funding agency for research funding in Finland, and is directed by the Finnish Ministry of Employment and the Economy.
Other business areas have been slow to follow, for example, construction business has not been able to improve their productivity in over 40 years, and they have just recently established their co-creation ecosystem under VTT, which is a state-owned and controlled technology and research centre.
The Author is a project management specialist and acts as a volunteer and board member for Project Management Institute Finland Chapter
Sources:
[Knowledge-Based View of the Firm – Theoretical Notions and Implications for Management, Kirsimarja Blomqvist ja Aino Kianto, Lappeenrannan Teknillinen Yliopisto, 2015]