What should companies do to survive?

A company is the sum of what its people understand and know how to do well. Value lies increasingly in creative ideas and knowledge. But ideas have value only if people share and develop them in ways that increase revenue; knowledge is useful only if people can find what they need to know. Getting intelligent people to share what is in their heads is vital, and takes more than mere money or clever software. Ideas must flow in every direction through a company-not merely from the top down. And knowledge is worth storing only if senior staff set careful rules to filter and structure it. What goes into a database determines the value of what comes out. So setting central rules and standards is key to good knowledge management. C Good judgement is a key skill. Managers constantly blitzed with new information need to build in the data that matters and set aside the rest. Big-bang decisions are generally best avoided-or implemented in small incremental moves that leave room for flexibility and for altering course, if circumstances change.