The Knowledge Entrepreneur

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (2006), "The Knowledge Entrepreneur", Library Review, Vol. 55 No. 9, pp. 643-645. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530610706905

Practitioners want to be relevant and current and be seen as such. So dealing in knowledge, and not just information, and being managers, and not just administrators, matters a lot. This makes this book useful in asking whether we can get there from here. Numerous books have appeared in recent years on entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs, arguing that professionals with library, information and knowledge credentials are uniquely suited to fill such roles. Special pleading, perhaps, because such a case could be made for, say, legal eagles and bean counters and marketers, but nevertheless a serious current challenge for us. Skrzeszewski (formerly president of the Canadian Library Association and someone who has run a management consultancy since 1992) provides a book that looks trite at first blush but grows on you for its plain common sense.

The knowledge entrepreneur is “someone who is skilled at creating and using intellectual assets for the development of new ventures or services that will lead to personal and community wealth creation or to improved and enhanced services”. Getting behind the information to the knowledge characterizes the knowledge manager, getting involved in intellectual assets recognizes that information specialists can handle legal and financial issues, creating effective and valuable products and services is something we have always set out to do.

As Studs Terkel (quoted in the book) says, “Most of us have jobs that are too small for our spirit. Jobs are not big enough for people”, a folksy take on empowerment but highly relevant here when we ask what plain Jane librarians aspire to do and be. The advice is to build knowledge capacity, like grow collaborative partnerships and seize opportunities, like know your strengths and weaknesses, know where you are going, learn from failure and accept risk.

Left there, the book would be a collection of adages and clichés. The author moves on to links between knowledge entrepreneurship and innovation and creativity, human capital driving value, making decision‐making smarter, creating new products and services and spotting opportunities. His examples put flesh on the bones and redeem it from Polyanna – the RFID technology in user self‐service, fileserver distribution to mobile telephones, website food advice and theme libraries in Dresden in Germany. These sprinkle the text and show that Skrzeszewski has done his homework: they also convince the reader.

Better still, he does two other important things – provides self‐audit case studies and provides examples of knowledge entrepreneurship. There are some ten case studies, structured around questions such as how would you describe your key competencies, how do you actually do your work and where do you see the greatest opportunities for knowledge entrepreneurs in the future? They are plausible biographical vignettes in their own right and so are easy to identify with. Good for skills self‐audit, not just for appraisal but also for moving on.

The other strength comes in chapter ten, where four key types of knowledge entrepreneur are discussed. Rather late in the day for a convincing argument, though it is convincing when it comes. Who are they, then? One is the information broker, providing on demand or market research information directly to consumers, expertise on finding and prioritizing information and interpreting and using it. There is a case study for self‐audit. Examples of actual brokers are provided (like FIND/SVP and Information Matters) that can be followed up independently (websites are given). Range of services is noted and some legal and ethical points, like confidentiality, are supplied.

Other types are knowledge manager, education and training provider and e‐publisher. Others might have been given, and, one real flaw at this stage, a coherent evaluation should have been provided, but that seems to be for another book. Chapter ten might have come early on but the author clearly wanted to deal with the context first. As a result, if you are buying or reading it, read early definitions, go straight to chapter ten for the meat and then go back over the advice.

The overall impression – and verdict – about this book is that it is more for beginners (to know about knowledge rather than information, and entrepreneurial strategy rather than just being efficient) and for practitioners a little further on who think they should spread their wings. Of particular interest, then, for the more experienced reader is what Skrzeszewski says about finance. It is fragmentary but interesting, above all for those wanting a glimpse inside the financial issues faced by anyone trading expertise in an organization.

This makes what he has to say about “Financing a Knowledge‐Based Enterprise” useful, with points on funds and debt and equity, and, better still, on fee and price structures (with cost calculations like daily billable hours). Its being in US dollars is beside the point: it reinforces the need for information specialists to retrain deliberately in financial management if they are successfully to become knowledge entrepreneurs and not just dream of becoming one. There is enough here to put this important point on the map. A useful and quick read, then, with relevant (though exclusively North American) examples, and feet on the ground.