The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/67910
The Path to Becoming a Knowledge Organization Illuminate the Path for People While this all sounds musical to the ears of an IT professional, technology does not make the law firm, people do, so we wind up dealing with subjective issues that are people-centric, including emotions, beliefs, neuroses, interpersonal relationships, fears, cliques and limited capacities. People are imperfect, but so are technologies. In the year 2020, there will certainly be many opportunities to take advantage of new technologies, economic markets and the circumstances of a "flattened" world, and — as always — the smart firms will realize the importance of changing with the times. They will plan for and take active steps to meet this change, illuminating a path that will prepare the firm for success in the year 2020 and beyond. The "easy job" will be to refresh desktop PCs to accomodate headsets. The harder job will be to adapt and customize software that responds to voice and hand gestures while meeting our business needs. But the hardest work will be to help people become familiar with this remarkable pace of change. Author Robert Huggins wrote in his book "Competing for Knowledge: Creating, Connecting and Growing:" "Firms cannot benefit from [new technologies] to their fullest extent simply by setting them up in their workplace. They need to reorganize production and create intangible capital in the form of organized knowledge." The Road to Valued Knowledge Looking back, management consultants, historians and economists have also contributed significantly to our understanding of the future. Perhaps the most influential seer of them all, Peter F. Drucker, coined the term "knowledge worker" in 1959. According to Drucker, we are living at the nexus of a new era. In his book, "Post-Capitalist Society," Drucker pulls together all of the forces that have brought us to this new beginning — one that predictably begins in 2020. World socio-economic history, he points out, is divided into four sharp episodic transformations that dramatically changed society — changing its "world view; its basic values; its social and political structure; its arts; and its key institutions" from one era to the next. Each transitional period drove civilization into new unimagined existences. Drucker points out that "We are currently living in such a transformation." These four periods begin in the year 1200 in which we saw the emergence of city guilds; 1455 with the invention of Gutenberg's printing press; 1776 with the American Revolution, the Age of Capitalism and the Nation State; and now. We are currently in a post-capitalist society, a transition period that started in 1960 and is expected to end before 2020. This is a non-socialist, free market society, and one in which the primary resource of economic value is knowledge. Drucker writes: "The means of production is no longer capital, nor natural resources (land), nor labor. It is and will be knowledge. … Value is now created by 'productivity' and 'innovation,' both applications of knowledge to work." We All Need To See the Light And it appears as though everyone got the memo: Business school professors and management research authors are starting their books and publications with a picture of a new world order. As described in the book "Knowledge Creation and Management: New Challenges for Managers," we exist in a fast-changing global economy, a flattened world of emerging economies participating and successfully competing for the production of technology, materials, finished goods and services; and knowledge, innovation and creativity remain the ultimate means of production unseating capital, labor and land as the inexhaustible source of productivity. In this market place, success is determined by the speed with which leaders can develop intellectual capital through knowledge creation and knowledge sharing on a global basis. Rapid and accelerating changes to business methods, customer loyalty and preferences, and product and service cycles, promise to disrupt traditional business models, indecisive bureaucracies and rigid corporate structures as communication and information costs approach zero, and ultra-low-cost competitors win the day. With confidence, each expert advises change. Keep up with the times or go out of business. Reform your practice or fumble. The leading social group in this new era is the knowledge worker, not the capitalist/industrialist, nor the landlord. Our major corporations are no longer run by capitalists (e.g., Ford, Rockefeller and Carnegie); they are run by professional managers. Knowledge is the primary means of wealth creation for a rapidly growing number of individuals, firms and economies. Knowledge is the primary means of wealth creation for a rapidly growing number of individuals, firms and economies. Peer to Peer 59