Asian KM-driven organisations gain ground

By Kate Clifton

Organisers of this year’s Global Most-Admired Knowledge Enterprise (MAKE) awards have suggested that Asian knowledge-driven organisations have now gained parity with their European and US counterparts. Businesses in this region, concludes the study, are becoming truly global operations with de-centralised headquarters. And this trend has been visible in the past two years’ competitions.

Motor company Toyota became the first Asian-headquartered organisation to be recognised as the overall winner of the study, which is now in its eighth year. The winners of the 2005 Global MAKE study, conducted by knowledge-management consultancy Teleos in association with The KNOW Network, are, in alphabetical order:

Accenture;
BMW;
BP;
Buckman Laboratories;
Dell;
Ernst & Young;
General Electric;
Google;
IBM;
Infosys Technologies;
McKinsey;
Microsoft;
Nokia;
PricewaterhouseCoopers;
Samsung Group;
Science Applications International Corporation;
Siemens;
Sony;
3M;
Toyota;
Wipro Technologies.

A panel of Global Fortune 500 senior executives, knowledge management and intellectual-capital experts rated the organisations against a framework of eight key knowledge-performance indicators. These, claims Teleos, are the visible drivers of competitive advantage and intellectual-capital growth. Winners were recognised as leaders in:

Creating a knowledge-sharing culture;
Developing knowledge workers through senior management leadership;
Delivering knowledge-based products and solutions;
Maximising enterprise intellectual capital;
Creating an environment for collaborative knowledge sharing;
Creating a learning organisation;
Delivering value based on customer knowledge;
Transforming enterprise knowledge into shareholder value.

The study also found that knowledge-driven organisations can significantly out-perform their competitors. For the ten-year period between 1994 and 2004, the total return to shareholders for publicly traded MAKE winners was 22.3 per cent – nearly double that of the Global Fortune 500 median.

In addition, profits as a percentage of revenues (return on revenues) for the same companies were 10.8 per cent – compared to the Global Fortune 500 median of 4.3 per cent. An executive summary of the 2005 Global MAKE study can be found at: www.knowledgebusiness.com