{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.019114219114219115, 'fraction_numerical': 0.010256410256410256, 'mean_word_length': 5.791139240506329, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Exploiting KM in Support of Innovation and Change

This chapter emphasizes the importance of formally promoting close social interaction and open knowledge sharing to achieve superior innovation capability. It does so by discussing the advantages of developing Communities of Innovation and citing a case study that exemplifies these concepts. This chapter addresses the challenges and opportunities faced by businesses in today’s complex and often unpredictable business environments. For success, an organization must be able to combine and recombine their resources in novel ways, eliminating or reconfiguring resources that are no longer relevant, and acquiring new resources. An organization’s capability to change by manipulating resources continuously and rapidly—to innovate—is a competitive advantage that is not readily imitated by competitors. Innovation is critical to an organization’s viability since it enables the development and introduction of new products and services and thus enables an organization to maintain, or improve, its current business position. The chapter reviews the numerous theories of change and change management in the literature based on practice and precept. However, research shows that competitive advantage is increasingly located by authorities in an organization’s intellectual resources including the skill base, business systems and intellectual property of its employees: its Human Capital. Organizational innovation depends on the individual and collective know-how of employees, and innovation is characterised by an iterative process of people working together, sharing insights, and building on the creative ideas of one another. The chapter emphasizes that an organization’s intellectual resources have significant potential to realize innovation and change capabilities, but that the impact of these capabilities largely depends on the means of an organization to foster close community social interaction and open knowledge sharing, and to leverage its informal leadership as a precursor to and part of any related Knowledge Management (KM) initiative. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-701-0.ch015