Article at a glance:

Best practice and beyond: Knowledge strategies

The business press is filled with accounts of the power of knowledge to reshape corporate fortunes. Conferences on knowledge management are announced with increasing frequency. Yet a closer look at the prescriptions on offer reveals that much of the discussion is about knowledge in the narrowest sense: the use of processes and technology to foster the spread of best practices across a company.

Here, we explore the practical implications of a wider view of knowledge for strategy formulation. As traditional structural advantages decay and more products and services enter the global competitive arena, strategies formed around knowledge can change the game and open up new paths to profitability.