2009 - ASIAN MAKE Winners

Key findings

• Many of the Asian MAKE leaders adopted their corporate knowledge strategies during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Although starting several years after pioneering Western companies, Asian-based organizations have been very successful at benchmarking and transferring knowledge best practices found in both European and North American MAKE Winners. Today, Asian MAKE leaders have reached parity with or have surpassed their European and North American counterparts in a number of knowledge-driven performance capabilities.
• European and North American MAKE organizations are facing leadership challenges in developing knowledge workers. A combination of factors – the retirement of growing numbers of ‘baby boomers’ and difficulties in recruiting talented new knowledge workers from the small pool of ‘Generation Y’ individuals – is forcing European and North American firms to devote significant resources to human intellectual capital management.
• European companies are considered the pioneers in enterprise intellectual capital management and continue to lead in this critical knowledge performance dimension. North American MAKE leaders have improved their capabilities in this area. Asian MAKE leaders are focusing on intellectual property, intellectual assets and brands, but as a rule still do not have in place enterprise-wide intellectual capital management strategies.
• Advanced IT-enabled enterprise collaborative knowledge sharing and social networking tools are now a core competency for MAKE Winners. Asian, European and North American MAKE leaders show equal skills in applying new Internet-based tools to effectively share and reuse knowledge in an increasingly global workplace. That said, knowledge-driven organizations able to harness Web 2.0 tools to engage ‘Generation Y’ staff seem to have a competitive advantage over enterprises continuing to rely on codified knowledge databases and repositories.
• Asian and European MAKE Winners have improved their scores in managing customer knowledge. There is very little to differentiate the regional MAKE Winners in this important knowledge performance dimension.
• Financial reporting for Asian companies is more opaque than found in Europe and North America. As a result, Asian companies have placed less emphasis on managing, measuring and reporting their effectiveness in transforming enterprise knowledge into increased shareholder/stakeholder value. Investors and national/global financial regulators are increasingly demanding greater ‘transparency’ in reporting this information. Asian firms will come under growing pressure to implement best practices in this area.
• According to the MAKE expert panel, the Asian knowledge-based economy is driven by the following key business sectors (based on the number of MAKE Finalists in each industry): electronics & electrical equipment, IT software/solutions, motor vehicle manufacturing, and the public sector.
• Based on the results of this year’s study, a number of Asian MAKE leaders have reached parity with or now lead their European and North American counterparts in the global knowledge race. The Asian MAKE Winners have shown improvements in organizational culture and innovation – both critical to creating a global knowledge-driven organization. On the other hand, opportunities exist to improve the management of enterprise intellectual capital and organizational learning.