Due to globalization and many emerging innovative changes in technology and business processes and their adoption by the organizations to gain competitive advantage, the economic and organizational communities have adopted tremendous changes by introducing fundamental innovations in the organizational strategy. The innovative technology devices, such as computers, electronical instruments are being utilized in a big way by the firms to pursue the efficiency of production and distribution processes. Enterprise-wide knowledge-bases became the sources to obtain and relay information about the business processes and activities and their progress and also to capture information about customers, suppliers and competitors. Hence, knowledge and knowledge processors can be treated as crucial enterprise resources, and their effective management is a key for success. Organizational culture is also viewed as one of the organizational knowledge resources.

Darren Dalcher, in his research paper, states that as modern development focus shifts from conventional commodities to a knowledge-based economy, intellectual capital becomes a primary resource. Spender, in his paper on knowledge fields, mentions that a knowledge-based theory of the firm has to deal with emotional and cultural aspects of integrating actors' activities together into functioning social entities, such as firms and organizations, and thence, into an emotionally burdened social context.

The research paper, "Evolutionary Economics Celebrates Innovation and Creativity-Based Economy", by Hokky Situngkir, discusses the trends in global economy in an evolutionary perspective, be it qualitatively speaking related to the symptomatic aspects, followed by the proposed modeling of computable evolutionary models on human culture and memetics (science that studies the replication, spread and evolution of memes) and envisages the global economy as celebrating the very different economy governed by the acquisition of knowledge and information supported by the related technological growth and developments.

The three modes of internationalization of innovation in organizations lie on a continuum between complete internalization and externalization of knowledge seeking activity, with cooperative agreements and strategic alliances appearing as intermediate mechanisms to gain external knowledge. Athreye believes that "In an emerging future where global technology markets become dominant, the way firms will approach technology acquisition and use will change in dramatic ways. This may also offer new prospects for the transfer of technologies through international market-based transactions for firms in many poor countries."

A lot of research has been done on the knowledge management initiatives taken by different countries in developing their Small and Medium Enterprises (SME). Improved knowledge management contributes to improved SME business competitiveness in several ways. Because of their small size, the SMEs tend to be more dynamic and agile than large organization and more ready to learn. Some SME case studies indicate that the key imperatives for many SMEs include: translating individual knowledge held by key personnel into organizational knowledge, generating new knowledge and encouraging innovation through various strategies.

The paper, "Drivers and Effects of Internationalizing Innovation by SMEs", by Christian Rammer and Anja Schmiele, studies the internationalization of innovation activities in SMEs based on a large data set of German firms. They tested two types of models: one on the determinants of an SME's decision to engage in innovation activities abroad, and another on the effects of international innovation activities on the home market performance of SMEs. It was interpreted that positive product innovation effects are covered by R&D activities and exports rather than by the mere fact that a firm produced new products. Innovative SMEs are able to profit from knowledge transfer from their foreign locations for their domestic activities and also benefit from exploiting new business opportunities from globalization by geographically expanding the market for their innovative products. They also reiterated that internationalization of innovative SMEs is no threat, and thus, does not demand fending policy reaction. Hence, innovative SMEs should be encouraged to make more use of internationalization opportunities, including establishing R&D activities abroad.

It is becoming customary for organizations to align knowledge management with their business strategy and treat innovation as one of the initiatives to accomplish it. The success of organizations by becoming more knowledge-based will increasingly depend on how successful knowledge workers are at creating and applying new ideas productively and efficiently. The pharmaceutical industry is also knowledge intensive, and hence, knowledge management finds an important place in that industry to improve R&D productivity and reduce product cycle time. Multidisciplinary project teams with multiple skills take part in drug development and the success depends on the availability of information from multiple sources presented to the team members and proper processing of information to create, transfer and manage knowledge about the product management, which include planning, development and marketing.

The paper, "Knowledge Management in Pharmaceutical Marketing: Theoretical Models", by M Sadika Sultana and L Manivannan, attempts to study the knowledge management in pharmaceutical marketing by presenting three simple theoretical models. The authors have chosen a sample of 410 Pharmaceutical Sales Representatives (PSR) to comprehend their awareness about the drug and its marketing.

-- Nasina Jigeesh,
Consulting Editor