Futur Studies Today

The knowledge society: a breakthrough to genuine sustainability part 1

The knowledge society: a breakthrough to genuine sustainability part 2

In a previous aticle[1] we have analyzed briefly how the internal logic of the knowledge economy differs from the industrial capitalist economy. We have acknowledged that this economy is really “post capitalist” and post industrial. We have also seen that most economic actors are still in an industrial mentality and try to manage a post industrial economy with industrial tools. This is perfectly understandable because there is not enough information and valuable debate on this shift between the industrial economy and the post industrial knowledge economy.

And this is perhaps the reason why the intelligent and prestigious “Lisbon strategy” of the EU  is not working so well. This EU Lisbon strategy has been set up in March 2000 at the EU (Heads of State) Council meeting in Lisbon. It has decided to aim at making the EU the most competitive economic actor in the Knowledge society before 2010, but in a socially inclusive and sustainable way.

Now, in analysing how this Lisbon strategy is working, one observes that the strategies are probably too “industrial” to be really successfull. Once again it is perfectly understandable, because the EU and its prominent economists, have not enough explained to the citizens and the business actors the post indsutrial economic transformation we are in.

But it is sad to see a waste of money and energy, in the execution of such a good project.

Double standard

Let us listen one of the most advanced visionaries of the US business in the XXIst century, Susan Mehrtens[2]: « American business, today wears two different faces. One is the face of the large multi-national, publicly traded corporations. They manifest an intense, single-minded focus on the bottom line, and are prepared to sacrifice almost everything to the quest for constant quarterly profits, to satisfy the Wall Street stock analysts. These companies practice an ethics of expedience (what works is right) and encourage extremely addictive behaviours among their personnel, most notably in the form of work alcoholism…Not surprisingly we are seeing more and more people leaving this dysfunctional environment .

 The other face of the US business is much more viable in terms of the future. It is the world of the small, privately held company… It is not subject to the dictates of the stock analysts of Wall Street… Many of those small companies are owned or operated by women, or are informed by feminine values. It is these companies – small, nimble, fortunate by virtue of their marginal status – that will find smooth sailing on the waves of the future [3]».

This double standard seems to be an accurate vision of the situation of the business today, in US, in the EU and elsewhere. One one side you have many enterprises in a classical traditional (industrial) logic. They are under market and short-term revenues pressure and are not treating humans in a very positive way. They seem to go backwards. And one the other side, you have those often women-owned small enterprises who care a maximum for the human dimension. They “will find a smooth sailing on the waves of the future”. This second vision corresponds to the witness of Rinaldo Brutoco, president of the World Business Academy. The management of Men’s wear, in which he is involved, is of the second type, and doing very well.

Those “new” enterprises have understood the new logic. In the knowledge society, and in this paradigm shift towards transmodernity, respect for humans is not only important, not only ethical; it is essential for the very survival of the enterprise. For a simple reason: knowledge becomes every day more important. And only creative humans can create new knowledge in inventing new knowledge through creative exchange of the knowledge they have. This creativity is like a flower that will blossom only if it is treated well, very well. This means much more that a decent salary. It means that the enterprise must have an excellent human capital management, but also a positive social and environmental impact on society.  It means also that creativity will stop if there is any fear of sanction in case of mistake. Creativity supposes the possibility to make mistakes!

Lack of theory.

However those enterprises of the second type, who are very promising, lack a theory. They are in fact switching to a post industrial paradigm. But they are like in an intellectual void. Here is what Verna Allee, a worldwide consultant in knowledge networks management is stating[4]: “Today we do believe that people are our core asset, that the way we use our knowledge and intelligence is the key strategic advantage of the company, that ethical principles do create value, that a company’s culture is key to success. Yet we are bound by the golden handcuffs of business, financial and economic models and frameworks that continually pull us in very different directions. …Virtually all of our business and economic models, as well as our day-to-day management tools, are leftovers from the industrial age. Time and again I watch managers and executives try to move forward into new ways of working and managing only to be frustrated by tools and frameworks that are inadequate for the new economy.”

She warns the reader that the knowledge or intangibles economy is forcing us to a radical change:  “It is rewriting the rules of business and forcing a radical rethinking of corporate value and business models. This change is the most significant shift since the industrial revolution.”

Intangible assets : three dimensions.

Now there is a good news. We have got one piece of the new vision: the so called “intangible assets”.

In 1986, a swedish scientist called Karl Erik Sveiby, wrote the first book worldwide on “intangible assets” in Swedish language. This book had a little succes in Sweden but it became famous when it has been translated in english and spread in US and in the whole world. It has laid down the first stone of the post industrial knowledge economy. For many people already active in the knowledge economy, it was the beginning of the new theory they were looking for.

Sveiby has since the beginning proposed to distinguish three types of intangible assets:

1. 1.     the human competence of the personnel that he called human capital. The people’s implicit knowledge and how this implicit knowledge is made explicit[5] and shared inside the company.the internal structures of the company, which cold be called the structural capital: its internal tructures and management, its ICT technology and the way it is used and improved by the personnel, its patents, its databases, etc
2. 2.     the external structures and relations  of the company, which could be called the external capital: its alliances, in which networks it is actively involved, networks of suppliers, of consumers and of citizens. Let us not forget also the trust that the people have in the company. (Are the people trusting more “Tupolev” or “Airbus”, for example). And finally the reputation, the “Brand” of the company. We will see in this article that brand and reputation become everyday more and more important.

Now authors like Verna Allee, underline that the model is not static. There is like a knwoledge flow between those three categories of intangible assets. She gives in her book this interesting quotation: “a company increases and utilizes its intangible assets by creating, sharing and leveraging knowledge to create economic value and enhance economic performance[6].

Knowledge is created by sharing. And one could say that knowledge is like love, the more you share the more you have. This is quite shocking for “classical” ears of an “industrial” economist. But the value creation process, in the knowledge economy is quite different from the value creation process we are acustomed to in the industrial production. Indeed industry produces objects, and is adding value to an object: from a block of steel I make a Renault. I have added value to this block of steel.

But is the knowledge economy, there is no object. Just knowledge. And the value creation process consists in adding knowledge to knowledge. My personnel is paid to add value to knowledge.

Let us take an example. My friend created a small company for setting up websites and providing webmasters. This small company won the bid to run the website of the European Commission in Brussels and Luxemburg. The contract stipulates that every official text siisued by the EU Commission has to be on the web into 48 Hours translated in all official languages. The personnel create value in translating the given knowledge. They add knowledge to knowledge. No objects. By the way the management is completely different. Indedd the CEO is incapable to control and command. He is not fluent in all EU languages. So he has used networks to make sure that quality is the best. How? Let us take the example of the greek language. He organizes receptions putting in network all the greek language people in Brussels: Greek Commissionner and greeks in the Commission, Greek MEP’s (Members of European Parlament), Greek in the Council of Ministers, Greek Ambassador, newspeople (radio, television, written press), Trade Unions, Consumers, intellectuals, etc. They all have a stake in having the best possible greek texts to work on. And the CEO, after a glass of champagne asks them to let the team know whatever error or problem could occur. Control is outsourced to an external network. Is this not a completely new type of management?

Ethics (values and purpose) is back in the picture

Finally Verna Alle shows that a company’s values and purpose are the primary organizing principle determining who its customers are; and what type of people are attracted to work there; and what type of structures and systems are required. As Verna explains well, the leading force in this new game are the company’s “values and purpose”, while in the industrial world the main leading force is linked to the amount of profit made. We are touching here a very important difference.

And this means also that most of the intangible assets, because they are value and purpose based, are qualitiative  and not quantitative anymore.

Finally ethics and values are thus coming back full speed in the picture, while most of the “industrial and scientific” approach was considered “value free” and out of the realm of ethics, because they were considered as “objective”.

We are indeed in another world.  

Intangibles are Future oriented: hence their importance for stock markets.

Let us now add another dimension to this intangible assets concept. They are “future oriented”. In another definition given by Baruch Lev in a book[7] on intangibles prepared by the Brooking Institution, in Washington, this new future dimension is underlined: “An intangible asset is a claim to future benefit that does not have a physical or financial embodiment. A patent, a brand, and a unique organizational structure…I use the terms intangibles, knowledge assets, and intellectual capital interchangeably.”

This definition gives us a very important new element: future benefit. And suddenly we discover that the “industrial” measurements of a company, which are based on tangible assets, like financial and other material assets, are oriented towards the past. We are so accustomed to this appraoch that we do not even acknowledge that those tangible assets are giving us information of the company’s performance from yesterday until today. You can measure if the the company has done well or not, according to the assets it has accumulated until today. But this accumulation of tangible assets does not give any information on how the comapny will perform in the future.

Meanwhile, and this is the new element, intangible assets are concentrating just into those other elements, which are crucial for the company’s future. One understands here immediately why intangible assets are so important today for the stock markets analysts and the Banking and finance community.

Accounting is dead: the problem is urgent for the banking community.

According to Thomas Stewart, editor of the “Harvard Business Review” and known author on intellectual capital[8], we are in a deep silent crisis, because we are still unable to measure correctly those intangible assets. This is a real threat to our accounting system worldwide: “Accounting, long dead, is not yet burried, and the situation stinks. Okay, that overstates the case, but not a lot. In the past several years, the indadequacies of industrial-age accounting have been proved again and again. Both financial accounting, which appears in annual reports, and management accounting, the data that lands on your desk, go wrong in specific ways, and with demostrable consequences….(268)

And what is wrong? The industrial-age accounting system seems incapable to take into account intellectual capital and intangible assets: “Accounting‘s failure to disclose intellectual capital is not just a thoretical problem. It costs investors money – perhaps you dear reader, among them… We are not talking fraud, except in a few cases – we are talking irrelevance, with the result that investors are kept in the dark and managers are operating by gues and by gosh.” (272).

Ans so there is, according to Stewart, a real urgency to be able to measure intangible assets.

How to measure intangible assets: two paths?

And, Baruch Lev observes that: “Intangibles are frequently embedded in physical assets (for example the technology and knowledge contained in an airplane) and in labour (the tacit knowledge of employees), leading to considerable interactions between tangible and intangible assets in the creation of value. These interactions pose serious challenges to the measurement and valuation of intangibles. When such interactions are intense, the valuation of intangibles on a stand-alone basis becomes impossible.” 

In other words, the classical economic quantitative measurement methods are not working. What to do? How to find a way out and measure the intangible assets? Two ways are envisaged by economists today. Either we are trying to quantify the qualitititve intangible assets. And this is what the majority of economists are doing. This is like trying to recuperate those new post indsutrial concepts into the classical “industrial” frame of thinking. It is truly understandable, although it is perhaps not the way to the future. Let us give here some examples: KPMG has even invented a mathematical formula[9]. Others like Leif Edvinson and Stewart himself, are proposing to rate the intellectual capital.  Others like the Saratoga Institute are proposing a “Human capital index”[10].

The other alternative is to say: “OK those intangibles are qualitative. This is almost impossible for classical economy to cope with. But we accept the situation and we try to invent an new economic approach which is more qualitative”. Here we accept that we are in another values system. But the difficulty is that shifting to a immaterial qualitative approach will suppose a real paradigm shift in economic methods, and basic economic axioms. And there are not many publications going in this direction.[11]

Intangible assets become everyday more important.

Economists are discussing but the majority agree that the EU and US economies at least around 40% in the knowledge economy[12].

And so the proportional importance of intangible assets in the evaluation of a stock must be around 40% at least, and in many cases much higher.

The more we are entering into the knowledge economy worldwide the more the intangible assets will become important. It is like a huge buldozer avancing upon the industrial society and becoming dominant in a very short period.

Now we are in a strange situation where a bit less that 40% of our economic indicators are “intangibles” and immaterial and we still do not know very well how to cope with them, how to measure them, how to give them the due importance in the sorck markets.

Here is a graphic, that hes been prepared for a reasearch project financed by the European Commission, in 2003[13].

© www.neskey.com

This figure shows that intangibles were negligeable 10 years ago (Past). Today they have as much importance than tangible assets (Present) and in 10 years time (Future), they could  become twice more important than financial (tangible) assets. We are thus in a rapid and important change and we must prepare for it.

But we will end this article with two good news. First, the more we are entering this knowledge economy, the more the content of the intangibles is evolving. The relative weight of sustainability and of social inclusion is growing in importance everyday.

The second is that stock market analysts are like forerunning the community of the economists. They use their intuition to quantify the intangibles, into the actual values of most entreprises worldwide.

Sustainability and social inclusion increase their shares in intangibles.

  The more we enter in this world economic transformation, the more on one side we begin to feel more and more agressive reactions against this “new management”, “those networks”, this immaterialization, etc. Some of the industrial managers feel threatened by the changes going on. They more or less subscosicously feel that their power will diminsh and die…and they begin to react negatively.

But on the other side, I am puzzeld to observe that from year to year, as a dean of a Business School, I see that our students are becoming more and more sensitive and interested to orient their companies towards full sustainabilty and social inclusion.

Discussing also with some stock markets ananlysts, it becomes more evident everyday that the content of the intangibles are becoming more and more influenced by sustainability and social inclusion. The young generation is more and more eager to run companies which are “part of the solution”. They do not want anymore be working in companies that are “part of the problem”.

The shift is really quick, and the intangible assets are like the driving belt of this paradigmatic change. They push through sustainability and social inclusion in the business’ agenda, through the stock markets.

Stock market analysts are  measuring intangibles…everyday.

Yes, stock market analysts are in silence forerunning. They are since years and in silence measuring intangible assets. And speaking with them is very instructive. They are of a precious help in the transitional period.

We hope to be able to go further in this direction with some interviews of stock market analysts, in our next article.

Marc Luyckx Ghisi,

January 2007.

We are entering more and more into the knowledge society and the knowledge economy. The European Union has decided to enter into this Knowledge society, in a sustainable and socially inclusive way. This has been a forward looking decision. (Lisbon Strategy 2000-2010). Every country in the world is trying to move in that new direction.

Why we need this doctorate ?

New Business schools, (Like “Cotrugli Business Academy” in Zagreb www.cba.com.hr, for example) are popping up, trying to prepare business executives for the industrial as well as for the post industrial knowledge economy. And there is a strong demand for such new type of Business schools, in India, Italy, Morocco, Lybia, Quatar, Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia, etc…

Unfortunately we lack good and competent professors in “Knowledge economics”. Professor Stiglitz has received the Nobel Prize for his work on “information economics”. This is an important new field of research.

So emerged the idea in CBA, to set up a Doctorate in “Knowledge economics”.

Belgian Universities (Louvain and Brussels) are studying the possibility to set up an Interuniversity Institute/Network for building (together?) a Doctorate in Knowledge economics. This network would be open to all interested Universities in the World. The Diplomas would be given by all Universities of the network. But the student’s fees should stay at national level. Students would receive a Doctorate from their University, but also from all the other Universities of the network. (Erasmus mundus system)

What we ask from the “sister Universities”?

What are we requiring from the “sister Universities”. Not much. If they accept to enter the network, they accept implicitly the value of this new Doctorate, and they allow the actual team to give this doctorate in their name. In principle we contact the Universities in which our future professors are already teaching.

Financially Universities will perceive the inscription fee in their country. And they will share one part of this money with the main actors. But this has yet to be formalized. And all students will have a diploma from ALL universites of the network. This is win-win logic. A network approach… like in the knowledge economy…

The inspiring model is the EU program “Erasmus Mundus”, open to the whole world, and where all participant universities are recognizing each others diplomas. http://ec.europa.eu/education/programmes/mundus/index_en.html

We intend also to use maximum telecommunications facilities. To allow professors who are not always able to travel to teach through the web. And we are also reflecting on a way to allow students around the world to follow the courses through the web.

Professors

Cotrugli Business Academy (CBA) is promoting this project. Its Dean, Marc Luyckx Ghisi PhD, has been working on this subject since he was a member of the “Forward Studies Unit” of the European Commission, (1990-99). He has later worked for the European Commission as expert in Knowledge economy, with a network of specialists worldwide. He has co-authored a book recently on visions of the future in the knowledge society.

He has the most advanced contacted the most creative minds, who have published serious books on the subject. Here is a first group of names. In red are the names who have already accepted to participate in this doctorate.

1. 1.      Dr Zhouying JIN, is senior researcher and professor of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, has been the main artisan of the Science and technology master plan for China 2000-2010. She has published brillant articles in English on how to apprehend knowledge economy from the roots of Chinese culture. She is also Concurrent Professor of Tsinghua University in Beijing.

      She has accepted and looks for Chinese Universities interested in participating.

1. 2.      Karl Erik SVEIBY (Sweden) is the inventor of the very concept of “intangible assets”, which is becoming central in the knowledge economy and in the Stock markets today. He has been teaching all over the world. For the moment he is Professor in Knowledge Management, Hanken Business School, Helsinki. Finland.

He has accepted and is asking how and if the Hanken Business school could be involved. 

1. 3.      Verna ALLEE : is a worldwide busines consutant based in Martinez (California). In her book “The future of knowledge” she gives excellent insights in the crucial importance of the networksone in the knowledge creation process. She is also the first to present intangibles graphically. She is working as expert for the European Commission and has written one of the first books describing graphically the intangibles of the enterprises. 

She has accepted.

1. 4.      Jospeph STIGLITZ (USA): Nobel price in information/knowledge economics: (to be contacted). In his writings he shows how different the knowledge economy is from the industrial one. Less pyramids, less secrecy, another education, more sharing, another management, etc….and he suggests that we are just at the beginning of the discovery of this new landscape.

1. 5.      Thomas A. STEWART: is editor of Harvard Business Review. And author of several excellent books on Intellectual capital and the wealth of knowledge. No response yet.

1. 6.      Hazel HENDERSON: author of “Ethical markets”,“Beyond globalization”and “Building a win-win world” is a an expert on sustainable development and knowledge economy. She has created the global TV series Ethical marketsand the Calvert-Hendreson Quality of life indicators. (to be contacted soon)

1. 7.      David ROONEY:is editor and contributor to the excellent “Handbook on the Knowledge economy” Edward Elgar, UK, 2005. And several other important books on the subject. He is currently Co-Director of Australia Creative Ressources Online, Associate Director of the Centre for Social Ressources in Communication, and Senior Lecturer in Knowledge Management, University of Queensland, Australia. He has accepted and is enquiring how and if the Univerisity of Queensland will participate in the project.

1. 8.      Patrick HIRSCHLER MARCHAND is currently working in high technology development in MIT (Massachussets Institute of Technology) Boston. He is very interested, but is enquiring if he will be able to combine this new task with his current job.

1. 9.      Ursula SCHNEIDER:is Director of the Institute of Management for International Management, and Professor of International management at Karl-Franzens-University, Graz, Austria. (Has accepted)

10.  Marc LUYCKX GHISI: is Dean of Cotrugli Business Academy, and former member of the “Forward Studies Unit” of the European Commission. He will be the chairman of the Team of International Professors, and the interface with the Universities giving the Doctorate. (accepted)

11.  We are looking for more Europeans, Asians and more women…

Louvain-la-Neuve University: has accepted in principle and is initiating the procedure to build this doctorate. A lot of adminstrative work has to be done…Probably in cooperation with the “University of Brussels” and “Solvay Buiness School”. Other universities can and will join.

Educational method: 3 circles

Circle 1:

We will ask the selected professors to be present one full week in total, a year. (Starting in autumn 2008, and perhaps with a first Conference in March 08).

1. 1.      The first week we could have Karl Erik SVEIBY, Verna ALLEE, and David ROONEY. They would each teach one full day, and have interactions with the other colleagues one other day. Total = 4 days.
2. 2.      The second week we could have: Hazel HENDERSON, Thomas STEWART, and Marc LUYCKX GHISI.
3. 3.      The third week could be Zhouying JIN, Ursula SCHNEIDER and Joseph STIGLITZ
4. 4.      During the week ends we organize Congresses in Europe on Knowledge economics with our guest professors as speakers.

Discussions will be videotaped, in order to be studied by the students. They will be available on the web. All professors will be nominated “visiting professors” in all universities of the network. They will be the Circle 1.

Circle 2 are the doctoral students. They will be allowed to ask questions and interact with the professors, at certain moments of the day. For the exams, students will not have to “repeat” what the professors have taught, but will be evaluated according to their ability to enter into the evolution of thoughts, and become creative actors in the dynamic process of “knowledge creation”.

Circle 3 will be composed

• ·         by the “observer” professors delegated by the Universities of the network.
• ·         by the sponsoring companies.

    They will be asked to be relatively discreet during the process.

Aims and values

• Students will be provided by important contacts worldwide.
• They will be introduced into a worldwide network
  • of personal contacts with other students of the whole world,
  • contacts with very key thinkers and probably the most advanced in the field of Knowledge Economics,
  • other universities
  • contacts and traineeships with the most innovative companies (sponsors)
• They will learn to co-create new knowledge in networks,
• They will learn to learn, and sometimes unlearn some obsolete “evidences”.
• They will be future oriented: transition to the Knowledge Society.
• Nobody will impose anything. Everybody is sharing and co-creating. Evaluation will be collective. But one professor will be chosen as mentor by every student.
• We also will publish books on Knowledge Economy, and push this knowledge forward. It is urgently needed.

Our Budget is not finalized yet.

But we have been asking SAP, IBM, and others an amount of 100.000 € as sponsors of the project.

We plan to give every professor 20.000 euros, for all costs, including travel lodging etc…

Management

Convenor : Marc Luyckx Ghisi PhD. Former member of the Forward Studies Unit of the European Commission, Dean Cotrugli Business Academy, Zagreb. marcluy@scarlet.be. He will be the chairman of the Team of International Professors, and the interface with the Universities giving the Doctorate.

Contact person: Arnaud Vanhonacker, Licence in philosphy, Louvain University. avanhonacker@gmail.com

ANNEX : COMMENTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. 1.       Dr Zhouying JIN : Driving force for sustainable development: principles of harmony and balance. In Knowledge economics, Volume 1: Principles and standards. University of Tartu, 2005, Pages 50-93. Very intersting article on how knowledge economy could be conceived from the Chinese cultural point of view. Dr JIN is giving a completely new light on the actual debate in the West.

1. 2.       Karl Erik SVEIBY:  The new organizational Wealth: Managing and measuring Knowledge based assets. Berret and Keolher publishers, San Francisco, 1997. Karl Erik is the inventor of the concept of intangible assets. He is like Verna also insisting that this knowledge economy is part of a new paradigm.  

1. 3.       Verna ALLEE:  The future of Knowledge. Butterworth Heinemann/ Elsevier Science 2003. Verna is one of the most advanced authors in this new post capitalist vision. She is the first author I know who has produced an image of the intangible assets of a company. See chap 12. She is also the most advanced author in analyzing and evaluating the quality of your networks, which is crucial for the production of knowledge. She is preparing a new book…

1. 4.       Thomas STEWART: The wealth of knowledge: intellectual capital and the twenty-first century organization. Nicholas Brealey Publishing, London 2002. This author is also the editor of the Harvard Business Review. His book is less in the post capitalist and post industrial vision. Very usefull for describing the intellectual landscape of knowledge economics.

1. 5.       David ROONEY, Greg HEARN, Abraham NINAN : Handbook on the Knowledge Economy  Edward Elgar, Chetenham, UK, 2005. 290 pages. This is a very interesting and complementary new approach, from the view point of socialogy of knowledge. To be read.

1. 6.       Jospeh STIGLITZ: One finds a first synthesis of his appraoch in “Public policy ofr a knowledge economy”. http://www.worldbank.org/html/extdr/extme/knowledge-economy.pdf

1. 7.       Hazel HENDERSON : “Ethical markets: growing the green economy”.Chelsea Green publishing, Vermont US. 2006.  See also “Building a win-win world”. Hazel is one of the most innovating economists I have ever met. She is open to all innovations. She writes articles that are published in 27 languages and in 400 newspapers around the world. (www.HazelHenderson.com)

1. 8.       Paul KIDD (ed.,) European Visions for the knowledge age.  Cheshire Henbury 2007. books@sheshirehenbury.com This is a collective book in which Marc LUYCKX GHISI has contributed. It is a very intersting book showing the dangers of huge manipulation if we do not shift towards a post indusrial paradigm. Indeed “engineering of human mind” could become otherwise the motto and the main strategy…

Other very interesting books on the subject, but most authors are not available for teaching…or have not been chosen.

1. 9.       Peter DRUCKER (+ 2005): Post capitalist society. Harper Business, 1993. 2edition Butterworth Heineman (?). This is THE masterpeice and like the last message of Peter Drucker. He has the intelligence and the authority to indicate that we are changing economy. And he does it in a brillant way. Note that when he died last year almost nobody signaled this masterpiece…They quoted almost all books behalve this one…perhaps too threatening.(Wall street Journal)

1. 10.   Harlan CLEVELAND: “The knowledge Executive : Leadership in an Information Society,” editor Truman Talley Books, E. P. Dutton, New York, 1985. orders by kvargo@hhh.umn.edu Harlan has been Vice Secretary of State of President John Kennedy after having been head of the Marshall Plan for Benelux and Italy, and Brussels US ambassador to NATO. He has reflected many years of this knowledge economy subject and has encouraged the “World Academy of Art and Science” to go in this direction. His book is a real pionneer masterpiece. What he has written in 1985 is still too advanced for today. I will try to organize a reedition of this book through an Indian editor.

1. 11.   Harlan CLEVELAND: ” Leadership and the Information revolution”  World Academy of Art and Science in collaboration with the International Leadership Academy of the United Nations University, 1997 : orders by kvargo@hhh.umn.edu

1. 12.   Steven ROSELL et al., : Governing in an information society Institute for Research on Public Policy, 1992.

orders at http://mqup.mcgill.ca/francais/index.php?page=title&id=607

This is a brillant book that has been financed by the Canadian administration and then set on the shelves….Still too advanced for today.

1. 13.   Karl Erik SVEIBY: Treading Lightly: The Hidden Wisdom of the World’s Oldest People. 2006 This last book of Sveiby analyzes how the Aborigens in Australia have survived so many centuries without to destroy a very fragile land, probably because they had a culture who was mostly based on knowledge and wisdom and not on object and power positions… very impressive. They were thus in a way in the knowledge economy, …since many thousands of years.

1. 14.   Ikujiro NONAKA & Hirotaka TAKEUCHI: The knowledge creating company: How Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation.  Oxford University Press 1995. Those two authors are the “inventors” of the concept of “implicit knowledge” in a company. This concept has been since them used and repated all around the world. Better go to the source…

1. 15.   Willis HARMAN:  Global Mind Change: The promise of the XXI st century.  Berret and Kolher, San Francisco, 1997, second edition. This is a wonderfull book explaing the paradigm shift we are in, in 200 very simple and extremely deep pages. A french would have made it in 2000 very complex pages like Edgard MORIN for example. Willis (+ 1997) has been one of the thinkers behind Silicon Valley. He has been also the head of the “Insititute of Noetic Sciences” in the San Francisco Bay area : see www.noetic.org To be read absolutely

1. 16.   Debra AMIDON, Piero FORMICA, Eunika MERCIER-LAURENT: Knowledge Economics : 3 Volumes, 2005. University of Tartu Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, 2005. This book contains some excellent articles. But some articles seems to try to push back Knowledge economics in to the industrial frame of “free trade economy”, which is perhaps not the best working hypothesis.

Interuniversity Network for creating a Doctorate in Knowledge economics.

It shows that in a time of transition we have in front of us the political and economic structures of the future …but we do not see them,and treat them as objects of the past.

1.the first Transmodern Political structure is the EU, but we treat it like a market…

2.The first economic structure of the uture is the “knowledge economy”, but we treat it like a simple extension of the industrial market economy…