The strategic advantage of knowledge and learning

International Journal of Learning and Intellectual Capital

Volumn 2, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 1-20

  Zack, Michael H ^a  

^a NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

knowledge management; knowledge strategy; organisational learning; strategy

Indexed keywords

EID: 84961557234     PISSN: 14794853     EISSN: 14794861     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1504/IJLIC.2005.006803     Document Type: Article

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54. While many authors distinguish (often not consistently) between capabilities and competences, the term capabilities, as used here, is meant to include both.
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59. A good place to start in identifying knowledge domains is with the generic strategic framework of Michael Tracey and Fred Weiserma (Treacy, M. and Wiersema, F. (1995) ‘The discipline of market leaders: choose your customers’, Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market, Addison-Wesley.) They identify three ‘value disciplines’ - ways to compete - each which suggests a general domain of knowledge: product leadership (product/technology knowledge), operational excellence (operations knowledge) and customer intimacy (customer/market knowledge). In practice, however, most firms have a much more complex set of knowledge dimensions.
60. This assumes the absence of technological discontinuities that might render a firm’s knowledge obsolete. While it is beyond the scope of this paper, one potentially fruitful avenue for extending this work lies in the value of strategic knowledge options. The notion of knowledge option is a natural progression from financial to real to intangible options. It includes defining the strategic scope and robustness of an organisation’s existing knowledge platforms, as well as the value of developing and maintaining multiple domains of potentially strategic knowledge as a hedge against technological uncertainty and discontinuity.