Winning the Knowledge Transfer Race
Winning the Knowledge Transfer Race
In business and industry, intellectual capital is knowledge that converts into solutions for customers and generates increased profits. When an employee transfers knowledge from a research report into his or her head, it is called learning. In doing so, he or she adds to their individual human capital, which is the sum of what’s in the employee’s mind as tacit knowledge or each person’s know-how, experience, skill, and creativity. But when bits of that learned knowledge are used or reused by the employee to create a new methodology, invention, process, or software program for customers, that employee has created an intellectual asset. When best practice knowledge is captured, created, shared, used, and reused across an entire organization, it produces superior results and a sustainable competitive advantage for the enterprise. For your company to compete successfully, it is vital to treat such knowledge—which can be anything from trade secrets, patents, software programs, inventions, schematics, methods, processes, or procedures—as cherished intellectual capital. To stand apart, you must capture, create, share, transfer, and reuse this knowledge in rapid and systematic ways in order to innovate quickly and convert the wisdom into profits.
Winning the Knowledge Transfer Race shows managers, Six Sigma practitioners, and small business owners how to leverage intellectual capital knowledge to achieve extraordinary results and win over fierce competition. Michael English and William Baker, pioneers and practitioners in the development and application of managing best practices knowledge and business excellence methods, provide the solutions and practical steps for managing intellectual capital at a Six Sigma level and incorporating it into your company’s strategies and tactics for sustaining a competitive advantage.
This breakthrough guide examines how intellectual capital shapes markets and comprises products and services. You’ll see how to incorporate a very potent best practices and intellectual capital management competency into a company improvement strategy, and discover how the Six Sigma, Baldrige and European Quality Awards, and Shingo Prize methodologies fit in and integrate with the knowledge transfer race, allowing you to reach top levels of performance.
Then, the authors introduce you to the best practices of some of the world’s most profitable companies—such as IBM, Toyota, Raytheon, Xerox, Buckman Labs, General Electric, Samsung, Siemens, and Verizon—in knowledge transfer and reuse, learning, process management, benchmarking, and intellectual capital management. They reveal how to duplicate these approaches in your organization, enabling you to:
- Achieve effective rapid knowledge transfer with ideal efficiency.
- Innovate knowledge-based products and services with tremendous speed.
- Make learning, sharing and collaboration an integral part of every employee’s job, creating a knowledge-enabled culture.
- Leverage knowledge into superior processes using the Process Classification Framework (PCF) as the process Dewey decimal system.
- Achieve success in maximizing the value of intellectual capital.
- Manage customer knowledge to improve loyalty and gain market share.
- Manage knowledge to generate superior shareholder value.
To stay ahead in the global battle for supremacy, Winning the Knowledge Transfer Race is the only book you need to cross the finish line first.
Michael J. English is the former director of quality and customer service for 1994 Baldrige Award recipient GTE Directories, a four-year Baldrige Award examiner, and a founding partner of Best Practices, LLC. He is the co-author of Benchmarking for Best Practices, which is highly regarded by performance improvement practitioners around the world.
William H. (Bill) Baker, Jr. recently retired as the knowledge management and benchmarking champion for the Raytheon Company. Previously he was the benchmarking champion for Texas Instruments and is currently a director in the Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME). He is a recipient of the APQC Award of Excellence in Corporate Benchmarking and a three-time recipient of the APQC Study Award for Outstanding Benchmarking Studies.
McGraw-Hill Management Hardcover 6 x 9, 380 pages, ISPN 0-07-145794-1,$29.95
Following is what thought-leaders and practitioners are saying about this book:
“You’ve heard all the buzzwords: business processes, benchmarking, Six Sigma, knowledge management, and so forth. If you want to understand how all these ideas fit together in a coherent fashion and support better business performance—at IBM, Toyota, Raytheon, and a host of other organizations—read this book.”
Thomas H. Davenport, Ph.D., President’s Distinguished Professor of Information Technology
and Management, Babson College
“English and Baker’s book is a new look at the evolving nature of the competitive landscape and the importance of continued learning to meet the significant challenges. Speed of learning and applying new found knowledge to benefit the customers has certainly become the mantra of successful organizations worldwide.”
Robert C. Camp, Ph.D., Principal, Best Practice Institute
“This is one of those rare books which moves beyond theory and provides practitioners with an actionable approach and a portfolio of tools and techniques to transform individual and enterprise knowledge into superior organizational performance.”
Rory Chase, Managing Director, The KNOW Network and Administrator of the Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise (MAKE) Awards
“English and Baker’s focus on leveraging intellectual capital and best practices without regard for paradigm focus will serve individual and companies in the future.”
Ross F. Robson, Ph.D., Executive Director, Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing, Utah State University
“Bill Baker and Mike English are dedicated crusaders for process improvement. This book is a culmination of decades of personal experience and knowledge about how organizations can ‘know-what-they-know’ and, more importantly, share it and thrive.”
Carla O’Dell, Ph.D., President, American Productivity and Quality Center, APQC
“These authors are practitioners, colleagues, thought-leaders and early-adopters of best practices benchmarking. They deliver a clear roadmap, inspiring stories, useful illustrations, and an actionable strategy for creating value and profitability as well as sustaining a competitive advantage.”
Christopher E. Bogan, President and CEO, Best Practices, LLC
Other Publications:
Bill has written various handbooks, articles and books including:
1. Texas Instruments’ Benchmarking and Knowledge Management Handbook – Six editions
2. Texas instruments’ Performance Metrics Handbook– co-authored with TI Team
3. Target magazine’s series of four articles on Knowledge Management in the Real World, co-authored with Melissie Runizen and Jeff Stemke
4. Oracle’s Profit magazine, 2007, article on Lean Manufacturing
5. ASQ’s Quality Progress magazine on Knowledge Management, co-authored with Michael English
Speed To Excellence 