The Role of Creativity, Innovation, and Invention in Knowledge Management

Globalization, fast-paced technological, economic, and social changes, and increased competition have affected the current business environment by changing the role of knowledge, innovation, and creativity in work, learning, and everyday life. Although Knowledge Management (KM) is usually explored separately from creativity and innovation, these concepts are closely related and in practice reinforce each other. Linking KM to innovation and creativity management in a holistic fashion has facilitated the examination of the knowledge management impact on innovation performance of organizations. In addition, this practice makes it possible to examine how creativity and invention can be used to increase the efficiency of knowledge management. This chapter focuses on the analysis of the role and importance of creativity, innovation, and invention in knowledge management. In addition, the chapter investigates the role of KM in innovation, and environmental and personal factors, which contribute to creativity, innovation, and invention in KM.

Knowledge Management and Quality in Croatian Tourism

Knowledge is an infinite resource of hotel enterprises and society as a whole. In hotel enterprises, it serves as a platform for practising sustainable development and gaining competitive advantages. Knowledge-based economic development provides the best opportunities for dealing with a global environment in which rapid and dynamic changes are taking place. Seen as a precondition to success, Knowledge Management (KM) will result in generating value-added in tourism. A survey was conducted in large and mid-sized hotel enterprises to demonstrate their KM level and the contribution of KM in gaining competitive advantages in the Croatian hotel industry. Empirical research was used to establish the level of KM development in the Croatian hotel industry, and to determine the importance of KM in gaining competitive advantages in the hotel industry. In addition to knowledge, quality is a vital factor in gaining competitive advantages in hotel enterprises. Globalized markets and increasingly discerning customers, demanding more and more for their money, are compelling product and service providers to ground their business systems on customer needs. Total Quality Management (TQM)—a new management philosophy—enables the systematic application of these ideas. This chapter looks at several TQM approaches that define the basic elements essential to successful TQM implementation, in particular, the element pertaining to employees. The application of these elements in the Croatian hotel industry is presented through the results of empirical research on a sample of mid-sized and large hotel enterprises.

Knowledge Management in Practice

Knowledge is created when individuals come together to solve a problem. Project-based learning focuses on solving problems. One aspect of the work of a 21st century design engineer is the requirement to work remotely on design projects. Engineers coming together to design a product face the problem of working remotely, collaborating, creating, and sharing knowledge. This chapter explores the use of wikis in a product design and development class at an Irish university. This chapter begins by giving an introduction to wikis and their use in education. The design project exercise and assessment process is described. The results of a study are provided that indicate that the vast majority of students found wikis to be a good tool for project collaboration. Wikis were found to be an excellent knowledge management tool that facilitates project-based learning.

A New Perspective on Knowledge Management Research

Knowledge management theories emphasize the role of knowledge work and knowledge workers in knowledge-intensive organizations. However, technologization has changed the knowledge work environment. Many knowledge workers create, process, and share simplified information in digitalized networks. This complicates the profession-based definitions of knowledge workers. This chapter contributes to the emerging concern about the future trends of knowledge management. First, the chapter suggests that knowledge management models ignore a large group of professionals possessing practical knowledge. These vocational professionals are considered a new target group for knowledge management. Vocational professionals’ practical knowledge is worth managing since they operate with organizational core functions. Second, this chapter presents an alternative education-based categorization of workers. The different functions of KM are manifest in the three categories: a diminishing group of workers without professional qualifications, a large group of vocational professionals, and a group of workers with higher education.

Strategic Knowledge Management

Clarification of the roles and interrelationships will crystallize the contribution to Knowledge Management Strategy in university application have led to the conclusion that Knowledge Management is the appropriate organizing concept and framework for laying the foundations of the Knowledge Era Economy.

Knowledge Management and Innovative Learning

The aim of this chapter is to link knowledge management as a field of education to innovative learning. There are opportunities to apply personal knowledge management and knowledge sharing logic in several related subject fields that enable innovative learning. Raising awareness of business students about their online and face-to-face networking priorities and entrepreneurial orientations are educational tools for managing personal connectivity and for understanding knowledge management challenges linked to innovative learning. The experiential learning cycle is implemented in field projects, which also support cross-cultural learning and highlight real life challenges of knowledge sharing in innovative activities. The assessment of knowledge management prerequisites in different organizations serves as the departure point for knowledge management development visions. The chapter explains that knowledge management learning in business studies is not limited to a separate knowledge management course. Action learning projects can mean innovative learning both for students and managers that learn how to apply external “gatekeepers.”

Organisational Flexibility through Human Capital Development

The current knowledge economy has brought several challenges to contemporary organisations. There is need for flexibility on the part of key players, namely individual employees as well as organisations as a whole; this flexibility arises from the innovation in both products and services. The complexity of knowledge requires an education that enhances softer skills. The intellectual capacity, creativity, and adaptability of individuals gives rise to greater flexibility. This strengthens the fact that there is a change of paradigm in the way human capital is viewed. Through the human-oriented perspective, knowledge is seen as collective sense making and social practice. The objective of this chapter lies in this context of complexity, change, and adaptation within an economic and social reality based on knowledge. Therefore, the chapter aims to reflect upon Knowledge Management in companies such as universities where tacit knowledge is stored as intellectual capital in the minds of both lecturers and students and to highlight the need to instill the new paradigm which fosters knowledge creation and sharing in universities.

Slow Knowledge

Breathless announcements of the latest information access devices occupy whole sections of our daily news, itself increasingly accessed online and on-the-go. This reinforces to the manager or educator the conventional wisdom that strategies for developing organisational capabilities inherently involve ever-quicker access and sharing of information—a belief reflected widely in organisational learning and strategy literatures. However, Knowledge Management’s role in translating learning into performance-enhancing capabilities remains opaque; “macro” evaluations are too abstract, leading to recent calls for empirical or “micro” studies. Furthermore, while rare breakthroughs attract headlines and research, customers and clients are mostly won or lost in the more mundane interactions of daily work. The evolution of organisational capabilities and how they rely on the medium of knowledge practices can be unpacked using the construct of an organisation’s “absorptive capacity,” a construct essentially unknown to KM. That construct can be improved by incorporating “tempo” as a crucial design and governance element. Analysing KM practices as supporting absorptive capacity is a new idea that provides both the manager and the educator with implementable recommendations. A detailed case study identifies the four key factors of capability development via KM, highlighting that “slow knowledge”—gearing knowledge processes to the appropriate absorptive capacity framework—can yield more effective organisational outcomes.

Educating and Training Organizational Knowledge Workers in Evaluating and Managing Intangible and Knowledge-Based Assets in the Knowledge Economy

This chapter discusses the importance of training workers about the intangible assets in a knowledge economy, the nature of intangible assets, how they are different from other assets, and the concepts of a knowledge workforce in a knowledge economy. It is apparent that many organizations are engaging the services of knowledge workers, but such organizations do not provide enabling environments for these workers to be fully productive. This chapter looks at the relevance of training knowledge workers in identifying intangible assets for creating value and enhancing competitiveness and innovation in a knowledge economy. Given that it has always been difficult to gather the prerequisite information to manage such assets and create value from them, the chapter discusses the nature of intangible assets, the characteristics of a knowledge economy, and the role of knowledge workers in a knowledge economy. Training and education of knowledge workers must not be taken for granted. The chapter also discusses how training and education of knowledge workers may enhance their ability in identifying intangible assets in relation to capturing the value of such assets, the transfer of intangible assets to other owners, and the challenges of managing organizational intangible assets. In a knowledge economy, knowledge workers play a central role in managing and evaluating intangible and knowledge-based assets.

A Conceptual Model of Creativity, Invention, and Innovation (MCII) for Entrepreneurial Engineers

The purpose of this chapter is to develop a conceptual model for Creativity, Invention, and Innovation (MCII) from a knowledge management perspective in the technical-vocational and interdisciplinary ecologies of practice. This chapter takes the form of a literature study regarding CII multiple knowledge-sharing issues. A methodological framework has been described in the introductory section of this chapter. The background of the study focuses on the general features of CII, highlighting needs and gaps in terms of teachers-engineers’ competence in promoting CII as new learning outcomes. The framework for the MCII focuses on the following main themes: theoretical views on CII issues; institutional and international collaboration; the construct of CII intelligence; teachers-engineers’ competence; and creative knowledge-sharing climate. The structure and the flow of the conceptual model are presented, followed by discussion, future research directions, and the conclusion.