Date of issue : Monday 03rd 2003f March 2003

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This is a quarterly virtual magazine for the thinkers and doers of the 21st century.
This magazine is free! You don't have to pay any charges.
Editor: Mario Raich, Ph.D.

The more we progress into the knowledge economy, the more we see a new world shining behind the bars of history. And . . . the more we get unhappy with existing solutions and organizations.
Today we offer you a short insight into the research we are doing on the foundations of the knowledge economy. You are invited to participate in this adventure if you like it.
We believe it is time to re-invent the learning organizations, i.e. the schools. We propose some provoking thoughts on the business schools. They are a true reflection of the industrial economy and we do not believe that they are capable to lead us into the knowledge economy. Please send us your reactions to this article.

At present we are working together with Learnità's Think Tank for the Knowledge Economy on the Foundations of the Knowledge Economy. An important, very ambitious undertaking. We have finished recently the work on one element: 'The Entrepreneurship in the Knowledge Economy'. At present we are working on the 'Corporate Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Corporate Value Creation' (see page 5 on the attached overview: 'Foundations of the Knowledge Economy').

Business Schools are expected to be the place where future executives are learning to become business leaders and managers.
In reality they get stuffed with a lot of theory and get brainwashed with the actual business gospel based on best practices and business cases enriched by the “flavor of the month” provided by the management gurus.
Sometime it looks like the business schools are big “prayer mills” all focused on the overall mantra of business growth and success and in addition dominated by the history.
In this respect the word “school” becomes reality. The main focus is still based on the ancient paradigm of “teaching and repeating”, just in more sophisticated way and a little bit more expensive. The main idea of the business schools seems to be to run large programs, displaying theoretical knowledge, enriched by case studies, avoiding to deal with the real business issues of the participants. This programs are always based on the available in-house knowledge and know-how. And anyway in most cases program directors know it better, what their customers need.
This is not surprising, because the faculty is following the criteria of the academic career, that has been developed for universities. Whenever the faculty is reaching out to the real world, they do it as consultants. We know that consulting is following the same pattern of best practices, case studies enriched by the flavor of the month as the business schools. In addition to this consulting uses the payment per day system, which is on of the most ancient ones. All this allows the business school faculty and the consultants to get around any responsibility. In fact it is a very convenient model for them!
Is comes not as a surprise, that such a system creates champions of copy-cats and prevents own thinking, new ideas and innovation, but does not encourage to take over responsibility.
We need desperately to build new bridges between the knowledge development and the knowledge application, using all possibilities we can get hold of.
(For the whole article go to 'Additional Information' You will find some ideas about the 'Talent Bank' and the 'Executive Academy').

The virtual Magazine “Knowledge Economy” is free of charge and has no advertisement.
We invite you to send the Magazine to other people that may be interested in the dialogue between the academic research and the business application.
We use a policy of “Right to copy”. For details look at section 7 “Research” in the issue No.1, January 2000.