Over the last decade, there has been an increasing amount of research on knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) and innovation. This book brings together current thinking on this subject from geographic and territorial perspectives. Researchers from across Europe and North America present contributions from a wide range of disciplinary approaches including management studies, innovation studies and geography. They explore areas such as innovation related cooperation between KIBS firms and their industrial partners, how KIBS firms mediate business knowledge and the impact that KIBS make in local, regional and international contexts. The book offers a timely exploration of the role played by the geographic and institutional environment in the processes that link KIBS, innovation and territory across different contexts.
Provides an updated view of knowledge management strategies of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) by focusing on how those firms manage innovation in their value chains and at the territorial level. Offers an original analysis of key processes of KIBS, specializing in design, professional firms and information technology.
Provides an international collection of studies on knowledge-intensive organizations with insight into organizational realities as varied as universities, consulting agencies, corporations, and high-tech start-ups.
This book contributes to an improved understanding of knowledge-intensive business services and knowledge management issues. It offers a complex overview of literature devoted to these topics and introduces the concept of ‘knowledge flows’, which constitutes a missing link in the previous knowledge management theories. The book provides a detailed analysis of knowledge flows, with their types, relations and factors influencing them. It offers a novel approach to understand the aspects of knowledge and its management not only inside the organization, but also outside, in its environment.
This book provides an in-depth introduction to knowledge risk management (KRM) as well as methods, tools and cases to address knowledge risk management issues in both the public and private sector. It focuses on the integration of knowledge risks into the holistic risk management of organizations. In addition, this book is accompanied by an external website that includes additional checklists, videos and company cases. The combination of a sound theoretical framework along with practical instruments, tools and ancillary materials makes this book a unique, interactive book for professionals, managers, and executives as well as students, academics and policy makers.
This timely book proposes a new perspective on building innovation in companies providing business services. Implementing an innovation orientation paradigm based on six pillars – strategy, organisational culture, human resources, structure and process, marketing, and technology – it sets out a framework for achieving innovation through knowledge management.
Knowledge-based Configuration incorporates knowledge representation formalisms to capture complex product models and reasoning methods to provide intelligent interactive behavior with the user. This book represents the first time that corporate and academic worlds collaborate integrating research and commercial benefits of knowledge-based configuration. Foundational interdisciplinary material is provided for composing models from increasingly complex products and services. Case studies, the latest research, and graphical knowledge representations that increase understanding of knowledge-based configuration provide a toolkit to continue to push the boundaries of what configurators can do and how they enable companies and customers to thrive. - Includes detailed discussion of state-of-the art configuration knowledge engineering approaches such as automated testing and debugging, redundancy detection, and conflict management - Provides an overview of the application of knowledge-based configuration technologies in the form of real-world case studies from SAP, Siemens, Kapsch, and more - Explores the commercial benefits of knowledge-based configuration technologies to business sectors from services to industrial equipment - Uses concepts that are based on an example personal computer configuration knowledge base that is represented in an UML-based graphical language
Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS) are becoming more and more relevant both for their innovative content and as innovation boosters for manufacturing firms and, with this scenario in mind, this book first offers an in-depth analysis of what innovation in KIBS is and its performance outcomes, and then synthesizes what we know about KIBS firms’ innovation models, as well as their specific peculiarities and limitations. This book examines the recent trends in innovation, service design and development in KIBS, starting from a review of the extant literature, explaining the role and specific traits of innovation in KIBS. Then, it progresses our knowledge about KIBS and about how new technologies are offering unique opportunities to use and share their knowledge, within and across boundaries. The book also includes several cases that show how, at the micro level, firms can effectively design their services and boost their innovation performance, by overcoming some of the traditional limits of innovation in services. While KIBS literature traditionally emphasizes that innovative and performing KIBS firms rely on tight client–provider interactions with service customization, recent research suggests that alternative modes of innovation are viable for performing KIBS firms: KIBS firms can develop mass customization strategies, ease interactions with clients via ICT interfaces and leverage on focused collaborations with expert clients. Particularly, the digitalization and ICT technologies are fostering platform and modular architectural designs of KIBS, as in the software and web design services. The book seeks a broader understanding of innovation in KIBS in the digital era and will be an essential guide for both academics and practitioners interested in KIBS innovation and design.
First published in 2000. Over the past two decades, the service sector have increased dramatically and now occupy the largest share of the economy of advanced industrial societies. Certain business services are regularly cited as evidence for the emergence of a "knowledge economy". In this pioneering book, leading researchers in the fields of service industries and innovation studies investigate the reasons for the growth of the service sectors and this emergent knowledge economy. Drawing on material as diverse as macroeconomic statistics and firm-level case studies, the contributors demonstrate that services are often important innovators in their own right, as well as contributing to innovation and economic performance in their user industries. The question of how far services are special cases, and what specific processes and trajectories characterize their innovative activity is treated systematically. Additionally, a variety of original analyses and information resources are presented. This book should be of value to the student of the modern industrial society, to those seeking to forge policies appropriate to the new context of economic development, and to researchers who are confronting the challenges of the knowledge economy.
