9.3. The Principles of Collaborative Knowledge-intensive Enterprise

(for businesses and managers who want and need to harness their intellectual capital for sustainable future prosperity

through developing successful collaborative knowledge-intensive enterprises)

11. Innovation Strategy

for managers

who are ready to transform their organizations

with the systematic notions of knowledge creation and application.

It is for organization leaders who prefer to be inspired with innovation strategy

than hit over the head with change management techniques.

It does not deal with barriers, hurdles, or conflicts to be resolved;

rather, it paints a possible vision of how we can take advantage of our collective learning to move an enterprise forward.

The knowledge economy is very personal.

It is not something which will be done to us;

it is something to which we will all contribute

our intellect and intuition. Unlike the agricultural age,

the industrial age and the short-lived information society,

the knowledge economy lies within each one of us.

• Debra M. Amidon

Just as the Lotus grows up from the darkness

of the mud to the surface of the water, opening its blossom

only after it has raised itself beyond the surface, and remains

unsullied from both earth and water, which nourished it —

in the same way the mind, born in the human body, unfolds

its true qualities ("petals") after it has raised itself beyond

the turbid floods of passion and ignorance, and transforms

the dark powers of the depths into the radiantly pure nectar

of Enlightenment-consciousness.

- GOVINDA, The Three Pillars of Zen

The evolution of "lotus innovation" thinking begins with the value chain used at the 1987 Roundtable, "Managing the Knowledge Asset into the 21st Century." In this technology transfer continuum, the focus was on how best to bring knowledge and technology into the corporation from university and research laboratories. Even with this diagram, tradition value-chain theories were challenged. The nature of the process meant fuzzy boundaries between the functions as notions of what, how, and when to transfer technology were questioned. The graphic also depicts a dual communication (i.e., not unidirectional) process in which industry has as much to offer academe as the reverse. It also represents the thinking that ideas can—and indeed must—originate from everywhere in the corporation. And finally, one has not innovated until the market demands more of the technology developed.

An examination of the technology transfer processes of effective Japanese firms made visible the value-added positioning of customers at the front end of the value chain, as illustrated by NEC's value links. Quality methodologies positioned customers—appropriately so at the heart of the innovation process, in which all functions determine activities based on value added to the customer.

The resulting lotus innovation flower with three tiers (i.e. microeconomic, mesoeconomic, and macroeconomic) provides a coherent planning framework in which an organization can consider its strategic vision. It incorporates the complex array of interactions necessary within the firm, outside the firm, and around the globe. As organizations continue to transcend boundaries of every dimension and the technology affords us communications opportunities previously unimaginable, the differences between us as companies, sectors, industries and nations will disappear

At the heart of all interactions is the concept of "innovating our future... together."