Summary

Dr Harryson develops the principle of 'know-who' - first propounded and practised by Japanese companies but now increasingly championed by multinationals. Case studies are used from companies such as Kodak, Ericsson, IBM and Philips to highlight the networking patterns deployed by these companies and to ultimately confirm or deny the relevance of 'know-who' management. The book explains why, in a world where knowledge and intellectual value is widely acknowledged as crucial, companies can achieve both innovativeness and productivity through 'know-who'.

By enhancing our understanding of 'know-who' based management of knowledge and innovation, the author suggests new approaches to dealing with the knowledge economy and to solving the paradoxical organizational needs of creative invention and rapid innovation. This approach is based on new networking patterns and new ways of using the results of extra-corporate networking such as:

gathering global market intelligence in cooperation with R&D staff internal networks promoting the diffusion of external and internal knowledge aligning R&D staff with marketing and production by internal 'know-who' mechanisms

Written by a leading management consultant, the theories discussed will be essential reading for business managers, international scholars and researchers of R&D, innovation and the knowledge economy.