The Knowledge Enterprise: Innovation Lessons from Industry Leaders

The Knowledge Enterprise is a unique second edition about mastering business innovation. Industry-leading companies reveal the secrets and lessons of transition leadership, the importance of customer engagement and the power of open innovation. Building on the success of the first edition, this book extensively develops the concept of the knowledge enterprise and business innovation.

The knowledge enterprise identifies the critical elements of the strategies and organisational dynamics relentlessly pushing all parts of the corporation towards breakthrough innovations. It is about mastering innovation as the driving force to make a difference to society, people and healthcare.

Where to play and how to win? Traditional approaches don't work. The book elaborates on the roadmap for future growth, the strategic choices and the change-provoking practices needed to realise the next level of company growth.

The second edition also reprises how the knowledge enterprise creates competences and assets that make the company distinctive to enter new business and markets.

The latest management thinking is integrated with intriguing, and entirely new, real-world examples. With vivid stories from leading companies like Royal DSM, High Tech Campus Eindhoven, Newtricious and Janssen Pharmaceutical companies of Johnson & Johnson, this edition reveals how to master business innovation and reinvent industry boundaries.

The Knowledge Enterprise is a unique volume about leading business model innovation. International industry leaders talk about their commitment to customer and societal engagement, and how they are transforming their business models and organizations by embracing open innovation. The book provides a comprehensive overview of the business transformations and strategies relentlessly pushing all parts of the corporation in the same direction, and consequently building momentum to reach industry frontiers and be the first to go beyond them. Organizational practices and theory are blended and serve to illustrate the development of the knowledge enterprise over the past five years and prospects for future growth.

Building on the success of the first edition, this book elaborates on the business transformation, customer centricity and the open innovation strategy needed to realize the next level of growth. The first edition is revised extensively, with focus placed on the organizational drivers needed to shift to the knowledge ambition, the lateral organization and the implementation of intelligent business strategies.

The second edition also reprises the stories of companies that master innovation by employing a distinctive strategy and leadership. Examples are taken from Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, Royal DSM, High Tech Campus Eindhoven and Newtricious, and reveal how to create and sustain an organization that drives business innovation. Fundamentally, it is a story of the process of regenerating the business strategy and dedicated, even persistent, sustained leveraging of core competencies. Attention is also devoted to how the knowledge enterprise is now guiding approaches to customer engagement, open innovation, orchestration, teamwork and design of the lateral organizational.