1st Edition

The Knowledge Evolution

By Verna Allee Copyright 1997
    296 Pages
    by Routledge

    296 Pages
    by Routledge

    The Knowledge Evolution offers a unique and powerful road map for understanding knowledge creation, learning, and performance in everyday work. This book reframes current thinking by delving into the hidden world of knowledge supporting both individual and organizational performance, laying the foundation for the emerging art of knowledge management. Packed with best practices from leading edge companies, essential guidelines, design principles, analogies, and conceptual frameworks, it serves as a practical guidebook for mastering the Knowledge Era. It will help managers make more intelligent decisions about knowledge creation, reduce wasteful technology investments and lead to new ease and confidence in applying knowledge and learning principles for themselves and for their organizations.

    Verna Allee delves into current thinking and practice to unravel the genetic code of knowledge itself. This revolutionary approach has surfaced a simple and elegant knowledge archetype. She demonstrates how this archetype can help us deal with complexity and suggests ways of self-organizing that make profound sense in today's networked enterprises. From strategies for core knowledge competencies to the key components of individual expertise, The Knowledge Evolution zeroes in on the critical success factors for the knowledge-based enterprise. What emerges is an approach to knowledge management that is simple enough to communicate at every level of the organization, yet rich enough to encompass all the complexity of modern enterprises.

    Verna Allee is the founder of Integral Performance Group, a consulting practice in California that specializes in the learning organization, knowledge competencies, organizational systems change, systems thinking, total quality and learning, benchmarking support, best practices research, and strategic development. She holds a degree in the Study of Human Consciousness and her work is informed by a deep interest in intelligence, human development, cognition, intuition and consciousness. She is the author of Learning Links: Enhancing Individual and Team Performance, Pfeiffer and Co-Jossey Bass, 1996.

    Understanding Knowledge - Introduction: The knowledge era; Knowledge competencies for adaptive enterprises; The knowledge navigators; Seeing patterns of knowledge, learning and performance; Knowledge archetypes in action; Knowledge, learning and organizations; Building Blocks for Knowledge - Doing the data two-step; Gigamonsters and other dragons: Procedural Knowledge; Building functional knowledge; The making of meaning; Integrating: The quest for the elegant solution; Renewing; Reconnecting with purpose; Expanded vision: Union performance; Into Practice: Best Practices in Knowledge Management - Strategies: Creating practice fields for knowledge; Culture, knowledge mapping and technology; The seeds of knowledge; The knowledge archetype in theoretical constructs; A question set for knowledge building in information management.

    Biography

    Verna Allee

    "This unique book blends the enduring wisdom of the past with the fresh thinking of today in order to provide a remarkably intriguing look into the future of tomorrow's business world." - Dr. Stephen R. Covey, author, 'Seven Habits of Highly Effective People'


    This book raises questions about the nature of knowledge, describes the differences between old and new ways of thinking, and suggests tools companies can use to navigate through the "knowledge era." -HR Magazine