Questions about knowledge and learning

I present first part of my answer to Carlos’ comment on my last post:

Indeed the container shipping technology transformed the transportation of goods and made it easier, faster, and cheaper. Also, the commercial airlines did for people transportation what container shipping did for goods. The internet is responsible for information transfer which allowed control and management from great distances. However, I want to identify what technologies and tools (most likely internet-based) allowed the transfer of knowledge aiming at innovation developments.

What I wanted to show on my last post is that the focus of this thesis will be on finding and analyzing the internet tools that allow communication, interaction and development of innovation processes across international and firm borders, geographical spread of economic activities within the same effort.

However, in order to understand knowledge sharing, it is needed to understand 2 main questions: what is knowledge and what types of knowledge are relevant for the innovation process? I pose these questions first because analyzing effectiveness of knowledge sharing tools across distances will only be sustainable if first the essence of knowledge transmission is discussed. In other words: what are the particularities of each type of knowledge regarding its transfers? What makes knowledge more easily transferred?

Of course these questions will require a different set of reading than the ones I’m used to. As Lundvall and Johnson (1994) say, economists have little to say about “what is knowledge”. And that question may be too fundamental for a thesis that will use it in a practical sense. Anyhow it is needed to understand its concept and particularities in order to criticize tools that aim at facilitating knowledge transfers – the process known as learning.

So here I make a request for those of you who understand and know sources where I can gather some answers. Please, leave comments with some authors, books, articles and other sources that you know are related to these questions.

References:
LUNDVALL, B.A; Johnson, B. (1994): The Learning Economy. Journal of Industry Studies, Volume 1, Number 2.

Flexible production, geographical spread and innovation

It is hard to communicate ideas that are not totally clear to its owner. Explanations are complicated and may follow a non-linear logic until all aspects of the idea are connected together. Understanding of a scientific paper as complex as a Master Thesis, as it is the case here, is of course conditioned to how well theories are articulated to sustain the idea. And that is not where I am yet. Therefore, expect here some overlaps, some rolling back, and some fuzz, until the idea is more organized. This post is another attempt to show what the objective of my project is.

For the lack of connection on the specifics of the topic, I must write as the ideas emerged in my head, and will even support it with visual aid, that maybe will be clearer than my words – I’ve been criticized often about my complex writing style, and that it makes harder for the reader to get my ideas. In advance, I’m sorry for that. Anyway, until I find the best way to translate these thoughts to paper, I’ll be trying around here. It is nevertheless a good exercise to do so.

References:

DAVENPORT, Thomas; Prusak, Laurence (2000): Working Knowledge: How organizations manage what they know. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

DICKEN, Peter (2007): Global Shift: Mapping the changing contours of the world economy. 5th edition, Sage Publications, London-UK.

LUNDVALL, B.A.; Johnson, B. (1994): The Learning Economy. Journal of Industry Studies, Volume I, Number 2