Winning the Knowledge Game: Smarter learning for business excellence

Industrial and Commercial Training

ISSN: 0019-7858

Article publication date: 1 January 2004

64

Citation

Currant, N. (2004), "Winning the Knowledge Game: Smarter learning for business excellence", Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 36 No. 1, pp. 42-43. https://doi.org/10.1108/00197850410516139

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2004, Emerald Group Publishing Limited


Winning the Knowledge Game is a stunning book which builds a compelling case for the value of managing knowledge for business advantage. Alastair Rylatt shows how you can combine ethics and integrity with growing your business and creating a competitive advantage through the smart use of knowledge.

The book is aimed at practitioners, training, HRD and HRM managers, and general managers. Training and development functions have the potential to play a big role in progressing and achieving the ideas and approaches contained within the book. The text should help those in HRD and training to position their role strategically and to influence within their organisations or those in which they are consulting. The ideas should also be utilised to ensure that the training and development functions as well as line management functions are proactive and influential in helping organisations move forward.

The book is divided into three parts: Opening hearts and minds, Growing competitive advantage and Ensuring lasting success. The bulk of the text, as would be expected, deals with ways in which to grow competitive advantage. These include ideas such as using technology effectively, polishing your training performance and keeping the best talent in the organisation.

Each chapter starts with the key points that are required to be achieved. The chapter then offers tips and methods for achieving those goals and then finishes with a summary. As such, each chapter is self contained and can be read and used in that way. Alternatively, by building on each chapter, the reader gains a holistic overview of the subject area.

The style of writing is almost poetic at times. Alastair Rylatt uses stories, metaphors and analogies to help paint a clear, understandable picture of his ideas. This makes the book very readable. Each chapter is broken down into smaller sections and bullet points are widely used throughout the text. This means that specific aspects are easy to find again and allows the reader to stop and start frequently without losing too much of the flow of the book.

The book is very forward looking. It is essentially about moving organisations into a successful future. The credo suggested is that it matters less about the past or the present, as long as systems are in place to capitalise on tomorrow. There are many really useful tips and hints in this book as well as numerous examples from organisations around the world.

This book has a broad appeal and applies to anywhere in the world that the reader may happen to work. It is one of those rare texts that is successfully able to appeal to its audience on both a professional and a personal level. Rylatt’s ideas are relevant to achieving both business success and to creating a happier and more productive environment in the workplace.

We live in the information age. Each one of us needs to be smarter in using knowledge; otherwise if this is not the case, we will lose out to those who do. If you have not already started to win or even started competing in the knowledge game, then you will do yourself no harm by making sure that you read this book.

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