Download Research on Enterprise Technology Innovation Ability Under Knowledge Management Environment

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Research on Enterprise Technology Innovation Ability Under
Knowledge Management Environment
ZHAO Weishuang, LI Changsong
School of Economic and Management, Shenyang Ligong University, P.R.China, 110168
[email protected]
Abstract: Knowledge management is effective way to improve the enterprise technology innovation
ability. The organic union of knowledge management and technology innovation will become important
way for enterprises to gain competitive advantage. Based on the related theories, this paper analyses
application status and existing problems of knowledge management in technology innovation activities,
and finally presents concrete suggestions of using knowledge management to improve enterprise
technology innovation capability.
Keywords: knowledge management, technology innovation ability, competitive advantage
1 Introduction
With the arrival of knowledge-based economy and the continuous development of economic
globalization and the increasingly fierce competition among enterprises, competition in the market boils
down to that of enterprise technology innovation ability. Anyone who has strong technology innovation
ability will grasp the market initiative and win in the competition. Therefore, strength and weakness of
enterprise technology innovation ability have become the decisive factor of survival and development of
enterprises and the important content of enterprise management strategy.
The essence of technology innovation ability is accumulation and application of knowledge, the
effective implementation and application can easily bring distinctive competitive advantage to the
enterprise. More than half of the world 500 strong enterprises have already established knowledge
management system promoted knowledge management. At present, many organizations are willing to
actively input and have their own expecting goals, a new round of management revolution wave is
sweeping the globe. Therefore, the study of enterprise technology innovation ability under knowledge
management environment has an important practical significance.
2 Definitions of Knowledge Management and Technology Innovation Ability
2.1 The definition of knowledge management
The theories and practices of knowledge management originate from 1980s. The concept of knowledge
management was firstly put forward in the UN international Labor conference in 1986, the theories and
practices of knowledge management developed rapidly in the following more than ten years and the
year of 2000 was confirmed as knowledge management year. The definition of knowledge manage of
American production and quality committee (APQC) is: "knowledge management should be a strategy
organization consciously takes, it can be guaranteed to transfer most needed knowledge to the people
who need it the most in most needed time, which can help people to share information, and then through
different ways into practice, and finally achieve the purpose of improving organizational performance."
Peter f Drucker, a master of management, argued that, "knowledge management is to provide
knowledge and effectively detect how existing knowledge best applied to effect, this is the knowledge
management that we mean."
Weijiang (2000)argued that knowledge management is to offer new ways for enterprises to realize
explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge sharing, through sharing knowledge, using the wisdom of
collective to improve strain and innovative abilities. The implementation of knowledge management lies
in encouraging employees to participate in knowledge sharing mechanism.
From the above, this paper simply defined knowledge management as, "knowledge management is the
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effective way of managing knowledge and realizing innovation, it is one of the sources of acquiring
competitive advantage for enterprises, is the process of helping enterprises to seek, discover, organize
and transfer important information to obtain competitive advantage."
2.2 The definition of technology innovation ability
Schumpeter firstly presented the concept of innovation in 1912, this laid a good foundation for the
presentation of the concept of technology innovation ability. After the 1980s, theorists officially
proposed the concept of technology innovation ability to study and different scholars also made different
definitions for technological innovation ability.
BurgelmarIetal(1996) claimed that enterprise technology innovation ability is a series of comprehensive
features which is convenient for organizing and supporting enterprise technology innovation strategy,
including resources and distributions available, understanding ability on competitors, understanding
ability for the development of the industry, company's organizational structure and cultural conditions,
pioneering strategic management ability, etc.
From resource factors of technical innovation starting with, WangJian(2000) decomposed factors of
technical innovation ability into input capability, output capability of technology innovation and the
capability of innovative activities process, internal support and social support ability of technological
innovation of enterprises , etc.
WangYiming's (2005) classification of enterprises' independent innovation ability, enterprise technology
innovation ability is divided into choosing ability, research and development ability, integrated ability
and learning ability.
To sum up, this paper simply defines enterprise technology innovation ability as, "enterprise technology
innovation ability is the resource inputs of technological innovation of the enterprise, the utilization of
innovation resources in the technological innovation process, abilities of implementation and control
management activities."
2.3 The relationship between knowledge management and technical innovation capability
There is a close relationship between knowledge management and technology innovation. Essentially,
technology is knowledge, skills and knowledge can't completely detach. Technological innovation is the
essence of knowledge innovation, though knowledge innovation cannot necessarily cause technology
innovation, technological innovation is not mentioned without knowledge innovation. From this point of
view, knowledge management is the base of technology innovation, the effective implementation of
knowledge management can promote the enhancement of technical innovation ability. If there is not
strong support of enterprise knowledge management, enterprise's technical innovation ability is like
source without water, wood without root, it will not last increase, which eventually leads to their own
stagnation.
Technology innovation process itself is a knowledge generation, creation and application process.
Knowledge management can effectively control knowledge flow of technology innovation phase, speed
up innovation speed. Improving knowledge management ability itself has been accelerating the
realization of technology innovation. Technology innovation process itself is a kind of risk events,
including various unpredictable uncertainties. Managing knowledge of both within and outside the
enterprise can effectively reduce the risk of innovation and improve successful rate of innovation.
3 Application Statuses and Problem Analysis of Knowledge Management in
Enterprise Technology Innovation Activities
Enterprise knowledge management in our country is still in its early edge and stay with the surface
layers for the application of knowledge management, did not fully take knowledge management into the
technical innovation system. There are still insufficient aspects in how to use knowledge management to
better improve the practice of technology innovation ability.
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3.1 Enterprise's low level of knowledge acquisition
Before forming the plan of technology innovation, enterprises must widely collect the relevant
information and knowledge from the market. Meanwhile, combining enterprise's original foundation of
knowledge, enterprises form technology innovation solutions. However, many enterprises lack of ways
of acquiring knowledge and information and the level of knowledge acquisition is low, enterprises often
make innovative decisions under the condition without gaining more perfect information, which causes
enterprise's innovative decision-making existing biggish risk and further causes enterprise's innovation
successful rate is low.
3.2 The weakness of enterprise's knowledge integration capability
The goal of knowledge integration is to make enterprise saved and safety management from external
knowledge obtained and internal knowledge created, and to create systematic, timely, efficient
environment for communication and application of knowledge. From the realistic situation, enterprise's
knowledge integration ability in our country is weak, this is mainly embodied in a lack of the platform
and talents of effectively putting knowledge into integration, ignoring fully exploiting the recessive
knowledge. If they can't effectively integrate enterprise's knowledge, it will do harm to the improvement
of integration capability of technological innovation.
3.3 Enterprise's low level of knowledge application
Only when knowledge which is distributed in every organization can comprehensively circulate
everywhere in the organization and apply to solve practical problems do knowledge generate value to
realize technology innovation. The importance of knowledge application is self-evident. At present, a
major problem of the weakness of enterprises' independent innovation ability in China is that
enterprise's research and development ability is not strong, this is mainly embodied in enterprise's
insufficient investment on research, not forming encouraging culture atmosphere of technology
innovation. In this case, only fully improving the applicative degree of knowledge can radically enhance
enterprise's R&D competence.
3.4 The weakness of enterprise’s knowledge sharing consciousness
Knowledge sharing is the key to success of knowledge management, especially the key of constructing
learning-oriented organization and enhancing enterprise technology innovation ability. But because
some enterprises lack of enterprise culture of knowledge sharing and incentive mechanism is
unreasonable. There is no incentive for staff to contribute their knowledge to share. When the
knowledge involves staff's performance quality, employees will not give knowledge sharing to others,
enterprise's knowledge is very difficult to get sharing.
4 Promote Enterprise Technology Innovation Ability under Knowledge
Management Environment
Knowledge management has become an important enterprise management mode and brings new ideas
for improving enterprise technology innovation ability, therefore, this paper gives some advice on how
to promote enterprise technology innovation ability under knowledge management environment.
4.1 Improving the level of knowledge acquisition and enhancing decision-making ability of
enterprise technology innovation
The strength and the weakness of enterprise innovative decision-making ability is the key factors to
success of technology innovation activities, quality of decisions directly affect the success and efficiency
of technology innovation activities. Knowledge plays an important role in making technology
innovation decisions, decisive maker's decision-making abilities mainly depend on whether it can timely
have beneficial information and knowledge of decision-making. Therefore, how to fully play the key
role knowledge in decision-making appears particularly important. The application of knowledge
management makes the enterprise to be able to smoothly get a lot of external knowledge, and improves
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enterprise's quality and efficiency of making innovative decisions based on the complexity of
knowledge. Through widely collecting information from internal and external, enterprises build
knowledgebase and its management system, and make full use of knowledge management tools to
increase enterprise technology innovation decision-making ability.
4.2 Improving conformity ability of knowledge and enhancing integration ability of enterprise
technology innovation
The main contents of enterprise innovation lies in knowledge innovation under the environment of
knowledge management, integrated innovation is to knowledge integration. Another study found that the
recessive knowledge of enterprises accounts for 90%, explicit knowledge only 10%. Therefore,
knowledge innovation relies on both integration and utilization of explicit knowledge, but also the
sufficient mining, calls, transformation, sharing and integration to tacit knowledge. And integration itself
is a kind of creative fusion process, namely injecting creative thinking in the process of combination of
each factor. Enterprises should integrate internal resource elements and technical knowledge, external
resources elements and technical knowledge in order to form new integrated knowledge of enterprises.
Specific measures is that an enterprise may strengthen integration ability of enterprise technology
innovation through constructing knowledge integration platform and knowledge map and raising
sufficient degree of the "T" talented person.
4.3 Improving application degree of knowledge and enhancing R&D competence of enterprise
technology innovation
Application of knowledge is the transformational process from theory to practice of knowledge in the
enterprise technology innovation activities, when organization confronts with new problems, apply into
practice to solve the problem, create value for the organization with the master of dominant or recessive
knowledge in the organization. Essentially, knowledge innovation originates from knowledge
application, is also a way of knowledge acquisition. Knowledge innovation achieve the knowledge both
in volume increasement and quality improvement. To enterprise's R&D department, especially basic
science of technology and thoughts, enterprises must establish special research and development
institutions to complete the knowledge innovation; For application and practice closely related with
knowledge innovation, enterprises should encourage all employees to compose innovative team together
to achieve. An enterprise may, through the measures of establishing knowledge management database,
creating favorable cultural environment of innovation knowledge and improving the investment of
research and development and so on, strengthen enterprise R&D competence of technological
innovation.
4.4 Improving knowledge sharing effect and enhancing enterprise learning ability of technology
innovation
Although any new ideas are produced by an independent personal, but the results obtained are relevant
to its surroundings and others' assist, therefore, innovative theory and practice proved the importance of
group cooperation. On the other hand, staffs who grasp the key technical or knowledge leave enterprises,
which will not only influence the normal work of enterprises, but even make work paralyzed. Therefore,
knowledge transfer and sharing are generally considered to be one of the key elements of knowledge
management. Knowledge sharing can greatly enhance learning ability of the organization, drive the
improvement of enterprise technology innovation capability. An enterprise may, through the measures of
establishing study-oriented enterprise, establishing the enterprise internal knowledge nets and so on,
strengthen learning ability of enterprise technology innovation.
5 Conclusion
In the era of knowledge economy, enterprise technology innovation ability rely more and more on the
development of knowledge management, knowledge management has become an important source for
enterprises to promote technological innovation ability and obtain competitive advantage. Enterprise
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technology innovation, in essence, is the application of knowledge, and knowledge management has a
guiding role to enterprise technology innovation ability, enterprises must learn to take knowledge
management into the whole life cycle of technical innovation, make enterprises achieve long-term
competitive advantage.
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