Summary

New strategies for business success based on shifting the focus from information to knowledge
-- Fifty percent of the fastest-growing companies in the U.S. can be described as ""knowledge companies"" -- those that employ highly skilled, highly educated people who sell their knowledge rather than products
-- Provides tools for measuring intangible assets such as competent and creative employees, patents, brand names, and company reputation
-- Some archetypal knowledge companies are consultancy firms, advertising agencies, software companies, and architecture firms

Few of today's companies improve performance through knowledge or learning. This is because few managers understand how to make a business of knowledge. They focus on explicit knowledge -- information -- instead of implicit human knowledge. Investing in information technology instead of in people, they only know how to measure performance in money.

This ground-breaking book offers practical advice and rules of thumb for designing a business strategy that focuses on knowledge as an intangible asset. It begins by outlining the differences between information-focused strategies (such as adding chips to a manufacturer's product line) and knowledge-focused strategies (such as seeking returns in long term customer relationships, ideas and learning, and research and development). Measuring the knowledge-based assets of a company explains why, for example, Microsoft is valued at 40 times its worth on paper.

In eight chapters, Sveiby assembles a veritable toolbox of knowledge-based management techniques to enable managers to meet the new business challenges of the coming century.