Transforming Young Professional in Knowledge Economy

TRANSFORMING YOUNG PROFESSIONALS IN KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY

- A Model To Transform Human “Resources” to Human “Asset”

Chinmoy Sarkar, Ph.d.

Chinmoy.sarkar@tcs.com

INTRODUCTION

Global knowledge economy is expanding due to the rise of knowledge intensity of

economic activities and increase in globalisation of economic affairs due to deregulation.
Economic growth is driven by the philosophy that knowledge product does not diminish
in value when given away. The revolution has intensified and increased the share of
codified knowledge in the economies. This codification process reduces knowledge into
information and transmitted around the world through enhanced communication system.
Information technology revolution has intensified the movement. The economy
continuously monitors how the technologies can transform the delivery of intelligent
knowledge in the decision-making process.

In agriculture economy, the prime responsibility was to produce, transmit and distribute
water to the customers; in industrial economy the same philosophy is developed to create
similar infrastructure for electric power. Knowledge economy operates generation
facilities to produce knowledge, operate transmission systems to convey the same from
the generation facility to the distribution system; and also operate distribution systems to
convey knowledge power received from the generation facility or the transmission
system to the final consumer. Knowledge is perceived as a commodity and a critical
source of innovation, extensive worth and heightened potential. The economy places
knowledge workers, their innovative capacity at the heart of strategic potential. Business
in a constant process of adapting new economic realities constantly innovates practices to
improve products and services to prosper in a rapidly shifting environment.

Youth & Knowledge Economy

Modern youth live in a new society, a society that is characterised by knowledge as

powerful element for his growth. . Certainly, knowledge that is valid today may be
outdated tomorrow. However, there is a knowledge distribution framework in place with
the capacity to navigate knowledge space that would enable them to deal with the change.
The competency and individual abilities are the aim of individual flexibility and
individual willingness to keep his life in continuous path of excellence. The use of
computers and microprocessors including automation, sensors, and communication
technology are responsible to provide youth many significant advantages to adapt to new
competitive work environment. This enables them to take decisions in a time sensitive
fashion with up-to-date information when activity occurs. The provision of timely
information results in significantly improved performance in any operations. However
the participation of young professionals in knowledge economy is mandatory as they
propose multiple strategies in changing market conditions.

Page 1
Transforming Young Professional in Knowledge Economy

Young Knowledge Professionals

The globalisation spirit supporting the information and communication technology

revolution has been an important contributing factor to the restructuring of any
organisation. At the beginning of the 21st century organisations have initiated strategies
to become a part of the knowledge-based economy. It has to be very adept at interpreting,
transforming data and information into knowledge and linking the knowledge to any
business. An organisation can derive competitive advantage in global economic scenario
only when it develops capabilities to capture the value of knowledge and convert it into
intelligence. The value can be extended across value chain. The organisation cannot do
anything in isolation and the value is maximized only when the professionals on whom
the growth of the organisation depends is organised on the expectations of the knowledge
economy.

The differentiating ability of any organisation is in creating opportunity in knowledge

economy by effective management of its asset base. However, young professionals
operate more in man-machine environment. AXELL, an asset excellence model can thus
be applied to incorporate human ‘assets’ for the management of physical asset base.

ASSET CENTRIC GROWTH

Technological development has brought the concept of man-machine relationship in

defining the term productivity. The current strategy undermines the capacity of asset base
and the key challenge in the 21st century is to transform resources into assets so as to
obtain a better influence on decisions. Organisations need to create a framework for
managing the values of professionals to solve challenging and complex problems, relying
on their imagination and creativity. They need to convert information into knowledge in
organisational premises based on high levels of education and skills. This drives the basic
philosophy of economic growth in knowledge economy and the accumulation of
innovative ideas is placed at the heart of strategic potential to create knowledge products.
Growth depends on fostering an environment in which invention, commercialization, and
diffusion of new ideas will flourish A growing number of professionals see themselves as
creators, organizers and exploiters of knowledge, and strongly focus on managing value,
taking values to delivery. A framework to manage document and motivation has to
support this. Knowledge professionals have to develop a state of mind to continuously
probe into the following.

Asset Definition

What is the real basis when a business resource is valued many times its material worth?
The business community understands the fact that the value of the resource is embedded
in potential far beyond its physical worth. The resource that is valued more than its
material worth in competitive market place is termed to be an asset. An asset has the
potential to earn commercial revenue in an open and competitive business environment; it
has asset value to be maintained over life cycle for continuity and a roadmap. Its

Page 2
Transforming Young Professional in Knowledge Economy

performance failure directly affects organisational revenue and means unrecoverable

commercial loss.

Physical assets like substation, transmission lines in utility industry, shovels, dumpers,
draglines in mining industry or rail coaches in transportation industry can be defined as
assets. A process sitting on the customer interface in customer centric organisation can
also be defined as asset. Knowledge like methodology in consulting domain can also be
defined as asset. Knowledge professional also suits the definition of asset. A professional
grows to meet a continuing exposure of excellence; he has to manage his value across life
cycle that can extract dramatically better service value when taken to delivery. In asset
state, a professional has to understand that he can no longer be constrained by boundaries
and limits. One of the challenges for a human resource to become an asset is to be able to
shift thinking, dream, research the dream, communicate researched dream to the
interested community. Figure 1 presents the framework and presents the location of an
asset in organisational space.

Assets in the
Making

3 1
4 2 Dream

7 5
8 6
Communication

Research Direction of Excellence

Fig 1: Dream, Research and Communication in the making of assets

There are certain attributes that potential human assets will need to develop; passion to
work with new ideas, capacity to appreciate the value of the ideas, ability to unite
complement bodies of knowledge towards opportunity creation, willingness to
collaborate with industry experts, ability to connect ideas to implemental solutions,
understand the scope of taking the solution to delivery.

AXELL, AN ASSET EXCELLENCE MODEL

AXELL is based on asset management principles that ensure the process of developing
the potential of assets, managing the continuity over the life cycle to explore value and
extract maximum services in the delivery. It is a strategy to reduce costs while increasing
the efficiency, the reliability and excellence of assets. The philosophy optimizes asset
life-cycle investments that manage quality of performance risks. Asset perspective
focuses improving its current value, reducing life-cycle costs, and improving delivery

Page 3
Transforming Young Professional in Knowledge Economy

rate, revenues. It establishes a competitive superiority transforming any resource from its
current problem solving state to an asset-centric opportunity creation state.

AXELL acronym for asset Management Model is based on the theories of hierarchical
needs and enterprise asset management principles practiced by capital intensive industries
like mining, transportation, utility etc.. Abraham Maslow has established the theory of
hierarchical needs to demonstrate that human beings are motivated by unsatisfied needs.
According to him, human needs are categorized by physiological, safety, love, and
esteem needs. Lower needs must be satisfied before a person can act unselfishly and
satisfy higher needs. Physiological needs are the strongest needs; safety and security
needs have little impact except in times of emergency or periods of disorganization.
Needs of love or social needs overcome feelings of loneliness and alienation. Esteem is
higher need to focus on self-respect. Needs for self-actualization is a need to satisfy that
which the person is "born to do". Professionals try to achieve excellence state for esteem
value and strive for quality, creativity and innovation day after day, step after step with
uncompromising contribution, commitment, passion, integrity and insight for exploring
and discovering and making dream a reality.

AXELL is a framework for asset-intensive organisation to manage growth of

organisational assets, create asset value and extract service value in the delivery process.
It aims at bringing excellence, innovative thinking in organisational space. It facilitates an
organisation having a group of professionals organised around a common vision to create
opportunities for the enterprise. A subset of professionals can be treated as organisational
assets.

Transformation Framework

A transformation framework is presented in figure 2 for an organisation to meet business

challenges on three pillars; Ownership (Growth Assurance), Management (Value
Creation) and Operation (Service Delivery).

Matured

1
GROWTH ASSURANCE
DESIRED

Regular 2

34
Value Added
CURRENT 5678
Standard SERVICE DELIVERY
Natural Renovated

VALUE CREATION

Fig. 2: The Transformation Framework

Page 4
Transforming Young Professional in Knowledge Economy

This framework provides a holistic, overall business perspective that reflects the
characteristics of agility, speed, and integration of disciplined process and focus on a
holistic system needed by organisation in modern businesses environment. Growth
assurance enriches the potential of young professionals and moves them from current
state to its highly potential desired state. Value creation promises creation of renovated
value employing processes to manage various assets. Service delivery exploits the
renovated value into operation space.

This framework reviews gradual adoption of business processes using information

technology as a tool; it also proposes ways to enable business applications to meet value
creation and service delivery processes to reach a desired state of excellence in a
systematic manner. The lifeblood of the initiative is in the development of effective
business process to draw better decision-making information from. Information
technology provides the capability and links various systems like mine planning, asset
management, truck dispatch and workforce management to meet the mine management
vision.

Organisation State Assessment

AXELL can be used to identify the failure of the system from the perspective of asset
excellence. Figure 3 depicts various states a resource or an asset can have in an
organisational space. An asset cannot deliver quality service under resource centric
environment. Organisation has to provide an asset an environment for opportunity
creation.

Blocked Continuous
Asset Potential Growth
Latent Radiant

Natural Progressive
Resource Condition Setting
Customary Nascent

Within
Resource Asset

Fig. 3: AXELL Organisation State Assessment

CONCLUSION

Modern management is centered on the principle that human workers are not to be treated
as a source of expenditure but rather of income. AXELL takes this a step further to say

Page 5
Transforming Young Professional in Knowledge Economy

that a subset of resources is to be treated as assets. They are independent thinkers who
could take the organization forward on the strength of their ideas, creativity and
commitment. An asset to an organization would add value to the organization beyond his
expected deliverables. Most of the countries have adequate level of readiness in respect
of infrastructure, skilled human resources, and business environment to work in the
production economy. Many already have a national human resource strategy to address
emerging challenges. However, knowledge economy is a new phenomenon. The fact that
knowledge is available in the Internet at the click of a mouse button makes all the
difference for knowledge professionals to succeed in knowledge economy. There has
been considerable debate on the scope for improvement of attitude of knowledge
professionals to respond to challenges particularly in ensuring that innovation and
domain centric thinking has a bigger investment in translating their potential into
continuity and delivery. There is an immediate need for developing human resource
strategy to implement a framework to take care of asset development in organisation. The
challenge is to provide an environment in which knowledge professionals come out of
their existing monotony of routines, grow beyond their obvious role of resource
controller and work towards value creation. The paper has presented AXELL, a model
for professional nourishment from a dreamer, researcher to connoisseur based on their
growth in Continuity and Delivery. The paper has also argued that there is a strong need
for continuous monitoring of their growth in the color path. Three forty three colors
present intermediate states for knowledge professionals to mature as a rainmaker in the
industry. Even more importantly, an exclusive focus has been given on transforming
knowledge professionals from problem solving state to opportunity creation state. More
on AXELL can be retrieved from the website: www.axell.in.

About the Author

Chinmoy Sarkar brings wealth of experience to capital-intensive industries like mining,

utilities, and oil refining as an educator, leader, business and information strategy
consultant and facilitator. In his progressive consulting career, he is a regular author and
invited speaker in national and international conferences, networking groups, workshops
and television media on knowledge economy, change management, enterprise asset
management, information system strategy planning, and enterprise transformation.
Chinmoy has consulted organisations towards restoring asset management philosophy in
asset-intensive work environment. His vision is to explore asset capabilities and move all
the assets in organisation from current state to a healthy, balanced and revenue-nurturing
state. In knowledge economy, he believes, the instinctive talent and creativity of a
knowledge worker can play a major role in promoting extraordinary opportunity for
organisation. He models this belief in his framework AXELL to champion the philosophy
of asset excellence and capture organisational entities having potential of an asset. The
model explains how to go about systematically enhancing asset performance and links
capability building strategy of asset-intensive organisation to delivery and business
creation. The model is special by its applicability across various assets including business
processes, physical plants and machineries, and knowledge professionals. Chinmoy has
conducted workshops on this model for organisation in India and abroad. Leading
academic institutes in India have conducted programs on AXELL.

Page 6