Post-Industry 4.0: The Knowledge View on World Age & New Leadership 5.0
Digitalization as a buzzword. Information and Knowledge as influencers. Like the once ubiquitous buzzwords “synergy” and “optimization”, innovation is in danger of becoming a cliché--if it isn’t one already. Leslie Kwoh, The Wall Street Journal, Management, 2012-05-23 But over the course of that decade innovation and its practitioners have grasped for but so far failed to land the next phase of innovation. - innovation as strategic change, except of course in select cases. Innovation is primarily about method [tools]. And that has to change. Haydn Shaughnessy, ISPIM Innovation Watch, May 2012.
In the Open Innovation economy the objective is to make innovative capability visible, facilitate the flow of ideas and support successfully external and internal information flows (knowledge) in organizations and collaborative networks (co-creation, community, crowds). So, innovation has become a necessity for almost every organisation and network involved in global business-systems. But does it lead to an overuse of the term digitalization including cloud, industry 4.0, smart technologies, data-information-knowledge exchange?
Information and knowledge are the influence factors of innovation and strategic change (communication -> knowledge). Co-working spaces, home and telework, and new co-creation platforms positively affect the idea of learning, innovation communication, and knowledge management. But what is the key problem and why is it important for successful knowledge management?
Do we overcome the 1,2,3 steps of content, method and methodology to truly shift leadership thinking and adopt new information and knowledge management systems, co-create and seize new opportunities in a new world age and new leadership 5.0 world? Are we ready?! What are the key drivers of successful knowledge management and how can we move forward and up to the next level 4,5,6? This article focuses on new leadership development and starts a discourse on knowledge management and provides also an outlook on the post-industry 4.0 age where human ingenuity, human (self)leadership. humanity and human capabilities reach a new level and turn the world into a new age of growth, properity, and warmthnot global warming rather the foundation of connection, communication and interrelation.
The Five Principles of Successful Knowledge Management
1. New Value Chain - The Role of Communication for Innovation (CMI
The new value chain - growth 2.0 - overcomes the main challenges of linking the (e)value chains, firm infrastructure, fragmentation of communication systems, corporate innovation methods, and resentment, fear and emotional age in adoption processes and innovation journeys. It is aligned as one value chain to truly empower individuals and organizations to (co) create value and invest in capabilities from a dynamic capability view. In other words, there is no innovation and information process without interactions and, hence, the innovation communication capability is key to build a solid foundation for long-term value creation and personal & business growth (including successful knowledge management).
2. Learning in the Growth Zone - Critical Thinking and Scenarios
We have many approaches to better understand innovation and change and how to prepare, become ready and bring forward ideas. For instance, our human navigation system which helps us to dive deeper into information-interaction designs and how we communicate in the new leadership world which in turn positively affects knowledge management (see communication model design as a strategic tool to better analyze, understand and improve information-interaction designs). Furthermore, critical thinking and scenario planing are crucial to lead, communicate and learn in strategic change processes and knowhow and research transfer projects (e.g. Reflective Innovation Dialogue method).
3. Complexity versus Simplicity - The SEMT Thinking Approach
From a system design perspective, innovation affects either simplicity or complexity. The basic idea of SEMT Thinking, as a methodology, is to help us reveal the structure and empirical model (real world understanding) to successfully innovate and shape new systems. The methodology is more than a conglomerate of different methods, such as design thinking, lean, agile, business model innovation and value proposition design, or communication model design. It goes beyond and supports learning-by-knowledge, dedicated to enhance strategic change and provide a new pathway for new leaders to link thinking and doing, step 1,2,3. SEMT Thinking and the so-called foodcamps, the practical instrument to learn more about SEMT, serve leaders and organizations alike to be ready and better understand the new world age 5.0 and new leadership world, in particular after CORONA and worldwide crises.
4. Leadership Development Program: Shifting Mindsets, Processes & Communication
We have our collective, learned belief system--our navigation system and world map--how we think businesses are built and what we learned about value creation, and how individuals relate, engage and connect with other individuals in systems to successfully innovate and achieve goals. We have learned how to communicate, innovate and strategize to get a job done, achieve greater impact, and make progress in the world. If we want to change it, we must understand how we can modify our navigation system and how we communicate at a system level. The new Sacred Tree Leadership Program (by Dr. Nicole Pfeffermann) exactly answers to this understanding of how to strategically change and shift to a new leadership.
5. Teaching and Knowhow Transfer: The World Lecture 2024 Summer School
Learning how to learn, learning how to think underpins learning how to learn. We are still learning from leaders, role models and leading projects (cases) in the world including those project managers and advisors who do motivate, understand to effectively communicate and interact and co-create value with so-called prosumers, meaning people around us and in our community, leading to a new approach of how to teach and transfer knowledge in the world age 5.0: The World Lecture and Multiart Zone is thereby a new approach to present new themes and level up to a new platform for new leaders, role models and artists who want to make a difference, contribute to the new world and empower individuals and human leaders.
You can read more on linkedin in my articles, in the two international edited books ‘Strategy and Communication for Innovation’ and ‘New Leadership in Strategy and Communication’, Springer, and join our maz Multiart Zone Community (Start November 2021 on linkedin) and participate as a partner in the World Lecture and connect with me to get insights and co-work on these new themes and drivers of the post-industry 4.0 age. Happy to hear from you.
