For many employees today, collaborative, complex problem solving is the essence of their work. These "tacit" activities—involving the exchange of information, the making of judgments, and a need to draw on multifaceted forms of knowledge in exchanges with coworkers, customers, and suppliers—are increasingly a part of the standard model for companies in the developed world. Many employees engage in activities of this kind to some extent; production workers at Toyota Motor, for instance, collaborate continually with engineers and managers to find new ways of reducing costs and solving quality problems. But employees such as managers and salespeople, whose jobs consist primarily of such activities, now make up 25 to 50 percent of the workforce. They are typically a company's most highly paid workers and make huge contributions to its competitive prospects in a fast-changing global business landscape.¹ During the next decade, companies that make these activities—and the employees most involved in them—more productive will not only raise the top and bottom lines but also build talent-based competitive advantages that rivals will find hard to match.

But building these advantages won't be easy: companies must alter the way they craft strategies, design organizations, manage talent, and leverage technology. The best...