The need for knowledge management for service innovation

Abstract

The world is fast moving from a productionbased economy toward a knowledge-based one. As a result organizations are becoming more knowledge-intensive and are increasingly dependent on innovative knowledge to create value. Therefore, the question of how activities should be organized in order to generate and exploit new forms of knowledge is a very important one. Thus, the main objective of this research is to explore practice based innovation in service sector organizations. Building on qualitative data from knowledge intensive business sector , analysis identified three work activities through which knowledge for innovation is generated, shows how they constitute a common ground for knowledge creation and redefines practice as a coherent frame for these activities. Further it explains how conventional organizing destroys this knowledge. In addition to the main contributions, this research identified key influencing factors for innovation in Sri Lankan service sector organizations. The study therefore provides both an empirical contribution to the emerging work on service innovation on the condition of knowledge intensiveness, and by extending a theory grounding on the existence and role of practice based knowledge.