The Knowledge Entrepreneur

In most companies knowledge management has focused almost exclusively upon the packaging of existing knowledge. Its exploitation has taken a back seat, while relatively little effort has been devoted to creating the additional know-how needed to innovate, discover and create additional customer and shareholder value.

The Knowledge Entrepreneur is a unique title that has been designed to help readers boost revenues and profit by significantly improving the performance of existing activities and creating new offerings that generate additional income. It shows how practical knowledge-based job-support tools can transform work group productivity, and reveals the enormous scope for addressing contemporary problems such as 'information overload' with imaginative responses.

Packed with information, this title is the first of its kind and puts a whole new spin' on knowledge management. It offers truly practical information to help the reader create, manage and profit from knowledge. Additional practical information includes:

• lists of possible commercial ventures;
• detailed checklists that can be used for identifying and analysing opportunities for knowledge entrepreneurship;
• exercises for assessing entrepreneurial potential and scoping' possible products and services.

The Knowledge Entrepreneur also includes a unique CD ROM that gives examples of knowledge-based job support tools that have dramatically improved results in crucial areas such as winning more business.

1. Entrepreneurship in the knowledge economy
• Abundant and accessible information 
• Implications, impacts and consequences 
• Knowledge-based opportunities
  
• The need for help 
• The knowledge entrepreneur 
• Aims and scope of book
2. Managing knowledge and intellectual capital
• Knowledge management 
• Loss of knowledge 
• Knowledge exploitation 
• Knowledge frameworks 
• Premium knowledge
3. Corporate learning and knowledge creation
• Knowledge creation 
• Knowledge as a flow rather than a stock 
• Knowledge and learning 
• Knowledge creation as a corporate priority 
• Protecting intellectual capital 
• Where knowledge entrepreneurs can help 
4. Contemporary information problems
• Information overload: winners and losers 
• Winning and losing 
• The search for single solutions 
• Taking certain approaches too far 
• Barking up the wrong tree 
• Barriers to entry 
• Changing organizations and emerging issues 
5. Requirements of different stakeholders 
• Customers
  
• Suppliers and business partners
  
• Investors
  
• The contribution of boards
  
• The myth of inevitable progress
  
• Supportive approaches to management
  
• Leadership for learning
  
6. Creating enterprise cultures
   
• Becoming a player
  
• Working with employers
  
• Organizing for entrepreneurship
  
• Unity and diversity
  
• Ten essential freedoms
  
7. Monitoring trends and the scope for knowledge entrepreneurship
   
• Freedom of operation
  
• Understanding issues and implications
  
• Effective issue monitoring
  
• Supporting wealth creation
  
8. Identifying and assessing specific opportunities
   
• Establishing search criteria
  
• Searching for performance improvement opportunities
  
• Improving sales productivity
  
• Job support tools
  
• Benefits of using support tools
  
9. Creating information- and knowledge-based offerings
   
• Packaging what you know
  
• Building job support tools
  
• Lessons that can be learnt
  
• Differentiation
  
10. Becoming a knowledge entrepreneur
    
• Entrepreneurial qualities
  
• The knowledge entrepreneur
  
• Crossing the Rubicon
  
• The challenge of launching new products
  
• Creating a new product launch support tool
  
• Advantages of a product launch support tool
  
• Using examples of best practice
  
11. Getting started
    
• Routes to entrepreneurship
  
• Turning a hobby into a business
  
• Selecting corporate partners
  
• Creating a welcoming corporate environment
  
• Creating communities of entrepreneurs
  
• Organizing for learning and entrepreneurship
  
• Public policy requirements

This is how you write books! Briming with practical advice, yet steaming with academic references and still manages to convey that it is discussing with the reader on how to go forward!

This is as valuable to a management consultant as it is to a practicing upper manager or a scholar looking to understand the state of the art and the practicalities involved in knowledge management and creating learning organsations.

Deeply recommended, even if it is very hard to classify WHEN you should read it!