<br/>
知识经济2<br/>
<br/>
What Is the Knowledge Economy?<br/>
For countries in the vanguard of the world economy, the balance between
knowledge and resources has shifted so far towards the former that
knowledge has become perhaps the most important factor determining the
standard of living - more than land, than tools, than labour. Today's
most technologically advanced economies are truly knowledge-based.<br/>
World Development Report, 1999<br/>
For the last two hundred years, neo-classical economics has recognised
only two factors of production: labour and capital. Knowledge,
productivity, education, and intellectual capital were all regarded as
exogenous factors that is, falling outside the system. New Growth
Theory is based on work by Stanford economist Paul Romer and others who
have attempted to deal with the causes of long-term growth, something
that traditional economic models have had difficulty with. Following
from the work of economists such as Joseph Schumpeter, Robert Solow and
others, Romer has proposed a change to the neo-classical model by
seeing technology (and the knowledge on which it is based) as an
intrinsic part of the economic system. Knowledge has become the third
factor of production in leading economies. (Romer, 1986; 1990) <br/>
Technology and knowledge are now the key factors of production<br/>
•    Romer's theory differs from neo-classical economic theory in several important ways: <br/>
•    Knowledge is the basic form of capital. Economic growth is driven by the accumulation of knowledge. <br/>
•    While any given technological breakthrough may seem to be random,
Romer considers that new technological developments, rather than having
one-off impact, can create technical platforms for further innovations,
and that this technical platform effect is a key driver of economic
growth. <br/>
•    Technology can raise the return on investment, which explains why
developed countries can sustain growth and why developing economies,
even those with unlimited labour and ample capital, cannot attain
growth. Traditional economics predicts that there are diminishing
returns on investment. New Growth theorists argue that the non-rivalry
and technical platform effects of new technology can lead to increasing
rather than diminishing returns on technological investment. <br/>
•    Investment can make technology more valuable and vice versa.
According to Romer, the virtuous circle that results can raise a
country's growth rate permanently. This goes against traditional
economics. <br/>
•    Romer argues that earning monopoly rents on discoveries is
important in providing an incentive for companies to invest in R&D
for technological innovation. Traditional economics sees "perfect
competition" as the ideal.<br/>
Enhancing human capital is critical for GDP growth<br/>
But sustained GDP growth doesn't just happen. In order to make
investments in technology, a country must have sufficient human
capital. Human capital is the formal education, training and on-the-job
learning embodied in the workforce.<br/>
What is the knowledge economy? "A knowledge-driven economy is one in
which the generation and exploitation of knowledge play the predominant
part in the creation of wealth" (United Kingdom Department of Trade and
Industry, 1998). In the industrial era, wealth was created by using
machines to replace human labour. Many people associate the knowledge
economy with high-technology industries such as telecommunications and
financial services. <br/>
More than 60% of US workers are knowledge workers<br/>
Knowledge workers are defined as "symbolic analysts", workers who
manipulate symbols rather than machines. They include architects and
bank workers, fashion designers and pharmaceutical researchers,
teachers and policy analysts. In advanced economies such as the US,
more than 60 per cent of workers are knowledge workers.<br/>
What Is Knowledge?<br/>
He who receives an idea from me receives instruction himself without
lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine receives light
without darkening me.<br/>
Thomas Jefferson<br/>
Unlike capital and labour, knowledge strives to be a public good (or
what economists call "non-rivalrous"). Once knowledge is discovered and
made public, there is zero marginal cost to sharing it with more users.
Secondly, the creator of knowledge finds it hard to prevent others from
using it. Instruments such as trade secrets protection and patents,
copyright, and trademarks provide the creator with some protection. <br/>
Know-why and know-who matters more than know-what<br/>
There are different kinds of knowledge that can usefully be
distinguished. Know-what, or knowledge about facts, is nowadays
diminishing in relevance. Know-why is knowledge about the natural
world, society, and the human mind. Know-who refers to the world of
social relations and is knowledge of who knows what and who can do
what. Knowing key people is sometimes more important to innovation than
knowing scientific principles. Know-where and know-when are becoming
increasingly important in a flexible and dynamic economy. Know-how
refers to skills, the ability to do things on a practical level.<br/>
Knowledge gained by experience is as important as formal education and training<br/>
The implication of the knowledge economy is that there is no
alternative way to prosperity than to make learning and
knowledge-creation of prime importance. There are different kinds of
knowledge. "Tacit knowledge" is knowledge gained from experience,
rather than that instilled by formal education and training. In the
knowledge economy tacit knowledge is as important as formal, codified,
structured and explicit knowledge.<br/>
According to New Growth economics a country's capacity to take
advantage of the knowledge economy depends on how quickly it can become
a "learning economy'. Learning means not only using new technologies to
access global knowledge, it also means using them to communicate with
other people about innovation. In the "learning economy" individuals,
firms, and countries will be able to create wealth in proportion to
their capacity to learn and share innovation (Foray and Lundvall, 1996;
Lundvall and Johnson, 1994). Formal education, too, needs to become
less about passing on information and focus more on teaching people how
to learn.<br/>
Life long learning is vital for organisations and individuals<br/>
At the level of the organisation learning must be continuous.
Organisational learning is the process by which organisations acquire
tacit knowledge and experience. Such knowledge is unlikely to be
available in codified form, so it cannot be acquired by formal
education and training. Instead it requires a continuous cycle of
discovery, dissemination, and the emergence of shared understandings.
Successful firms are giving priority to the need to build a "learning
capacity" within the organisation.<br/>
The Importance of Intellectual Capital<br/>
Intellectual capital is a firm's source of competitive advantage<br/>
To become knowledge driven, companies must learn how to recognise
changes in intellectual capital in the worth of their business and
ultimately in their balance sheets. A firm's intellectual capital -
employees' knowledge, brainpower, know-how, and processes, as well as
their ability to continuously improve those processes - is a source of
competitive advantage. But there is now considerable evidence that the
intangible component of the value of high technology and service firms
far outweighs the tangible values of its physical assets, such as
buildings or equipment. The physical assets of a firm such as
Microsoft, for example, are a tiny proportion of its market
capitalisation. The difference is its intellectual capital.<br/>
How do we measure a firm's intellectual capital? How can a firm tell
whether its knowledge assets have increased or diminished over a
certain period of time? According to Strassman (1998), intellectual
capital is what is left over after suppliers, employees, creditors or
shareholders and the government have been paid, and obsolete assets
replaced. There are other approaches, including those of Sveiby (1997)
and of Stewart (1997). One tool that is now widely used by US companies
is Kaplan and Norton's Balanced Scorecard, which combines financial
with non-financial measures, such as internal business processes,
learning and growth, and various customer-related measures (Kaplan and
Norton, 1996). Competency models seek to define and classify the
behaviours of successful employees and calculate their market worth,
while a business worth approach seeks to consider the value of
information and the costs of missed or under-utilised business
opportunities.<br/>
The Importance of ICT<br/>
ICT releases people's creative potential and knowledge<br/>
What about information and communication technologies (ICT)? ICT are
the enablers of change. They do not by themselves create
transformations in society. ICT are best regarded as the facilitators
of knowledge creation in innovative societies (OECD, 1996). The new
economics looks at ICT not as drivers of change but as tools for
releasing the creative potential and knowledge embodied in people.<br/>
However, the ICT sector has a powerful multiplier effect in the overall
economy compared with manufacturing. A 1995 study of the effect of
software producer Microsoft on the local economy revealed that each job
at Microsoft created 6.7 new jobs in Washington state, whereas a job at
Boeing created 3.8 jobs (Mandel, 1997). Wealth-generation is becoming
more closely tied to the capacity to add value using ICT products and
services. The value of accumulated knowledge within New Zealand is an
important indicator of its future growth potential.<br/>
The New Economics of Information<br/>
The rate of technological change has greatly increased over the past
thirty years. Three laws have combined to explain the economics of
information (Gilder, 1994). Moore's Law holds that the maximum
processing power of a microchip at a given price doubles roughly every
18 months. In other words, computers become faster, but the price of a
given level of computing power halves. Gilder's Law - the total
bandwidth of communication systems will triple every 12 months -
describes a similar decline in the unit cost of the net. Metcalfe's Law
holds that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the
number of nodes. So, as a network grows, the value of being connected
to it grows exponentially, while the cost per user remains the same or
even reduces.<br/>
While Metcalfe's Law has been applied to the Internet, it is also true
of telephone systems. Gordon Moore first formulated Moore's Law in the
early 1970s. There can be no doubt that the cycle of technology
development and implementation is accelerating and that we are moving
inexorably onward, out of the Industrial Age and into the Information
Age.<br/>
Globalisation<br/>
ICT open up global markets and foster competition<br/>
With the advent of information and communication technologies, the
vision of perfect competition is becoming a reality. Consumers can now
find out the prices offered by all vendors for any product. New markets
have opened up, and prices have dropped. When businesses can deliver
their products down a phone line anywhere in the world, twenty-four
hours a day, the advantage goes to the firm that has the greatest
value-addition, the best-known brand, and the lowest "weight'. Software
provides the best example: huge added value through computer code,
light "weight" so that it can be delivered anywhere at any time.<br/>
Competition is fostered by the increasing size of the market opened up
by these technologies. Products with a high knowledge component
generate higher returns and a greater growth potential. Competition and
innovation go hand in hand. Products and processes can be swiftly
imitated and competitive advantage can be swiftly eroded. Knowledge
spreads more quickly, but to compete a firm must be able to innovate
more quickly than its competitors.<br/>
Brands are critical. They strengthen consumers' trust in nations and their products<br/>
In a global marketplace where consumers are overwhelmed by choice,
brand recognition assures their trust in both the tangibles and
intangibles that a product will deliver. Like intellectual capital,
brand equity can be hard to measure yet it may account for a
significant proportion of a company's value. It is intangible in the
sense that it often consists of customers' perceptions of the value
they gain from using a product or service rather than any measurable
benefit. A nation's brand can be as important (or more) as the firm's,
and provide extra leverage for whichever firm's brand is attached to
the actual product - Swiss watches, Scotch whisky, German cars,
Japanese appliances, New Zealand butter.<br/>
New Zealand has powerful brands<br/>
The importance of nation brands, such as New Zealand's "clean, green",
"Maori/South Pacific" and "young/innovative" brands, lies in their
ability to add value by transcending the product yet being integrated
within it - as recent fashion, children's literature, music and organic
food export successes illustrate. Brand New Zealand has often been used
to attract visitors. However, the Internet offers New Zealand companies
the opportunity to leverage off "brand New Zealand" as well as their
company brand identity, for export purposes.<br/>
Small countries such as New Zealand have become dependent "bidding
economies" currying favour in globalised markets. Any small government
that ignores these facts will be punished through capital flight and
currency devaluation. Thanks to advances in information technology,
markets (and the trans-national corporations that underpin them) act
quite independently of their respective national political systems.<br/>
Capital searches the globe for the best returns, looking for innovation<br/>
This has lead to the globalisation of capital. Capital continually
circulates in search of maximum investment opportunities. Information
technology has accelerated this process and made it more successful. It
is no longer geography that determines the winners. Idea-driven
innovation cycles in the knowledge economy determine an economy's
position in the global hierarchy. The more innovative and intelligent a
business location is, the higher its rank in the ladder of global
investment.<br/>
Countries like… New Zealand are in far stronger positions to take
advantage of the information revolution than they were to exploit the
industrial revolution <br/>
(McGovern, 1998).<br/>
Lessons for New Zealand<br/>
Our people are a source of competitive advantage<br/>
New Zealand companies need to better understand and use the concept of
intellectual capital. They need to look at their products, processes
and people, and assess and augment the amount of knowledge they
possess. They must unlock the value of their hidden assets, such as the
talents of their employees, the loyalty of their customers, and the
collective knowledge embodied in their systems, processes, and culture.
They must learn how to turn their unmapped, untapped knowledge into a
source of competitive advantage.<br/>
The information age heralds the "death of distance"<br/>
For New Zealand, one of the single most important aspects of the
Information Age is the "death of distance" (Cairncross, 1995). Distance
no longer determines the cost of communications. This will be one of
the most dynamic shaping forces for New Zealand. Patterns of
international trade, concepts of national borders, and the basis of
decisions about where people live and work will be altered in ways that
are only dimly imaginable.<br/>
New Zealand at the centre of the global economy<br/>
In this new view, New Zealand is at the centre of the world. Our
white-collar workers can compete on price and quality with those in
London or California. New Zealand will be able to retain graduates who
until now have emigrated in search of higher salaries. Work-related
travel will decline. People will no longer have to live in cities to
work; instead, they will be able to work from wherever they choose to
live. ICT will enable New Zealand not only to overthrow the tyranny of
distance but also to mitigate the disadvantages of our small population
and low population density - at 13 people per square kilometre similar
to that of Argentina and Finland (Statistics New Zealand, 1994; Collins
Concise Atlas of the World). New Zealand is no longer on the edge, but
at the edge.<br/>