ABSTRACT

This chapter identifies some ways in which firms can maintain and enhance their competitiveness by creating, exchanging and using knowledge, both codified and tacit. It should be stated at the outset that the role of knowledge and knowledge creation in economic activity is regarded in the broadest possible sense in the analyses to follow. It does, of course, include activities such as investment in R&D and the development and adoption of leading-edge technology (discussed further in Chapter 5), but the impact and importance of knowledge creation are by no means restricted to such activities. On the contrary, the aim of this chapter is to establish a theoretical foundation for subsequent analyses of what we may call ‘low-tech learning and innovation’, that is, how firms also in fairly traditional industries may (or may not) be innovative in the way they handle and develop resource management, logistics, production organisation, marketing, sales, distribution, industrial relations, etc.1