1.1 The Rise of the Knowledge Age
We live in an era of great transformation. International political scenarios are changing very rapidly and, even as this book is being written, they appear uncertain and unpredictable.
This epochal change includes technological innovation. Manufacturing is turning into the so-called 4.0 industry (see Lee, Bagheri, & Kao, 2015), a digitalized, automated and integrated productive platform that brings great opportunities and even greater risks with regard to unemployment. Moreover, it is possible to assume that so-called exponential technologies (see Cochrane, 2014), which supposedly generate exponential changes, will transform our lives.
Many people are technology dependent and their lives are continuously connected by smart-devices and social media . This phenomenon does not only affect millennials , but also digital migrants , those born in the analogic age, who have had to adapt to the digital era. Technology is everywhere, and sophisticated technological devices are even embedded in many common products. For example, the cars we drive every day are full of technological apparatus including a body computer, Electronic Braking System (EBS), parking sensors, and the like. Every time we use a credit card to buy a flight ticket or to order pizza on the Internet, we are utilizing a digital platform and enacting an electronic procedure.
These transformations are very often the outcome of ‘glocal’ processes . They are the result of the interconnection between local, trans-local and global phenomena, and have a global impact. It is true also for knowledge. The most famous smart-phone model is produced by one of the most heterodox US high-tech companies, led (until he passed away) by the charismatic entrepreneur and inventor Steve Jobs. Jobs, a US Citizen of Syrian origin who spent his youth in California during the rise of counter-culture, was proud to ‘think different’ and suggested that the students of a famous Californian university should ‘stay foolish’. The iPhone is a concentrate of glocal knowledge. It is designed in California, puts together hardware components and software produced all over the world, and is assembled in China – and in all likelihood, will be assembled in India in the near future. Moreover, it is probable few people know that Steve Jobs’s passion for technology design and human-friendly interfaces was inspired by Italian design and by the heritage of a visionary and extraordinary Italian entrepreneur, Adriano Olivetti, in particular (Molella, 2012). The special relation between the design philosophy of Steve Jobs (and consequently of Apple) and Italian design (with a particular regard to the Olivetti heritage) was recalled by the director of the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the National Museum of American History, in a post (Ib.) that was published in the blog of the prestigious American museum. According to Molella (Ib.), Steve Jobs had the opportunity to attend the International Design Conference in Aspen in 1981 and to meet the Italian protagonists of culture and design, including the designer Mario Bellini, filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci and carmaker Sergio Pininfarina. Moreover, when Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he sought out the car designer Giorgetto Giugiaro and architect/designer Ettore Sottsass (both of them had collaborated directly with Adriano Olivetti). Thus the iPhone design also has a bit of an Italian touch.
The glocalization of knowledge obviously concerns management too. For example, The Art of War, the military strategy book written by the ancient Chinese General Sun Tzu (1963), was one of the most popular books on strategy of the last decades, at least among Western managers and consultants (see Mintzberg & Lampel, 1999). Furthermore, the Toyota production system (Ohno, 1988) greatly influenced the world industrial sector and considerably transformed not only manufacturing but also the service sector. And the same theoretical model proposed by Nonaka and colleagues, one of the pillars of knowledge management philosophy, may be considered a ‘made in Japan theory’ (see Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995).
Our everyday life is definitely glocal as well. When we go to the fitness club to take our Pilates class, we are enjoying a discipline that was developed by a German fitness practitioner of Greek origin, Joseph Hubertus Pilates, blending together exercises from yoga, an Indian discipline, Asian martial arts, Western ballet, and so on. The most famous kung fu master, Bruce Lee, was trained in the wing chun style (a heterodox style created by a woman) in Hong Kong and then founded his own martial art, jeet kune do, in the USA. Jeet kune do is an innovative blend of traditional kung fu, boxing and modern martial arts and is very different from the ancient wu shu discipline, popularly known as kung fu in the West. Even pizza, the famous dish made in Naples, is served all over the world in many different versions, adapted to local traditions and tastes, some of which would be inconceivable for an Italian consumer. Business, and more generally, life, are becoming, every day, more glocal, along with knowledge.
Knowledge is the fuel that fosters economic growth. According to the Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz (1999, p. 3), economic development should be seen as ‘less like the construction business and more like education in the broad and comprehensive sense that covers knowledge, institutions, and culture’.- As a matter of fact, the emerging economies that have had a better performance in terms of GDP growth were also the nations that invested more in education . Therefore, the positive relationship between human capital and economic development is recognized by economic research.
Knowledge is also the fuel that fosters the growth of contemporary MNCs (Ghoshal & Bartlett, 1990; Holden & Glisby, 2010), which need to conciliate a global, holistic strategy with a local touch, and hence be able to create and exploit glocal knowledge. It must also be considered that knowledge and innovation are the two faces of the same coin. In fact, innovation is based both on knowledge exploitation and exploration (Andriopoulos & Lewis, 2009). Moreover, innovation may be considered a form of knowledge creation (Maimone & Sinclair, 2010; Popadiuk & Choo, 2006) and/or conversion (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995). Therefore, in order to foster disruptive and incremental innovation, MNCs need knowledge.
It could be said that the boundary between the old and new economy (e.g. brick and mortar and click and mortar industries) is becoming increasingly weaker and more permeable every day. In fact, contemporary manufacturing uses technology on a large scale: computer numerical control machines, sensors and robots play a central role in the production processes of contemporary industrial plants. Moreover, the relentless development of machine learning technologies that are leading to the advent of the so-called industry 4.0, is fostering the progressive automation of large-scale production (see Manyika et al., 2017). On the other hand, 3D printing technologies are likely to facilitate the development of a new model of production system: networked manufacturing. These innovations, along with digital transformation , which is changing the way organizations are designed, managed and advance the ascent of virtual and semi-virtual enterprises, are reshaping the production systems and promoting the shift toward a more knowledge-intensive factory . Whereas Fordist organizations used to concentrate skilled workers in management ranks (as Ford himself used to say, blue-collar workers were not paid to think), the new digital industry needs more skilled and trained workers, technicians more than blue collars.
Lastly, the digital revolution is transforming our lives, business models and, as already mentioned, the way organizations are designed and managed and people work. Human beings still need material goods, but digital consumption is playing a bigger role every day and it is no coincidence that many of the first Fortune 500 companies are involved in the digital business.
It is worth remembering that the term ‘knowledge’ is used not only to indicate the outcome of high-tech and scientific activities. The Stradivari violin is arguably one of the best known examples of the fruits of tacit knowledge . Born in Cremona (a little town in the North of Italy) in 1644, Antonio Stradivari crafted a series of violins that produced a very special and inimitable sound. The lutes made in Cremona, which were played by Niccolò Paganini among others, were the result of a mix of scientific and technical knowledge, artisan mastery and a particular form of art. Even now, in the twenty-first century, it is practically impossible to reproduce a Stradivari violin, even though researchers from all over the world have tried to discover the magic recipe invented by the Italian master. The secret of the precious violins, created by the lute maker from Cremona, has been kept so well that even in the digital age no one is able to reproduce a violin with the same quality and magical sound as Stradivari did.
Thus, even though the common opinion tends to identify knowledge with scientific and technological innovation, there are different types of knowledge that pervade every aspect of our lives. Knowledge is a mixture of tradition and innovation, personal and codified knowledge, scientific/technical and humanistic thought, science and art.
Even if technological innovation is scientifically driven, in order to effectively and sustainably use the outcome of innovation, a new kind of humanistic awareness is needed. This is also because technology, contrary to the positivistic thinking that still pervades Western soci...