Keynote Speakers

Cristina Sousa

ISCTE – Campus Universitário de Lisboa

Topic of Speech and outline to be known.

Jay Lebowitz

Stillman School of Business at Seton Hall University, New Jersey, USA

“Applying Knowledge Management, Intuition-based Decision Making, and Analytics in These COVID-19 Times”

Julee Hefner

The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, USA

What needs to happen in the new Knowledge Economy?

For more than a decade, dramatic changes have constantly been shaping the business environment. It used to be true that a worker could expect to have one career and develop one set of skills for their working lifetime. Job mobility was limited. Organizations updated systems could remain stable and competitive, with little attention paid to workers. Organizations often did not realize the impact of intangible, tacit assets within the knowledge worker.

As organizations became more globally based, they depended increasingly on explicit assets, and they were left behind. The new knowledge worker has become autonomous. The new asset in this economy is knowledge. Changes in the knowledge economy are seen in three areas: first, within the knowledge worker – intellectual capital, second, the process of remaining sustainable – updating competencies, and third, the interrelationship of the global marketplace.

The need to constantly update knowledge within organizations for strategic and competitive advantage requires a new mindset and adoption of unlearning models.

In this keynote presentation, the new leader will be expected to create an environment to support knowledge workers. It is the process of challenging old assumptions, updating the current mind-set, and collaborative exchange within teams, suppliers and customers that will allow for sustainability. We explore how we can make this mindset shift and other changes to remain competitive in today’s everchanging knowledge economy

Leif Edvinsson

Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Professor Edvinsson is a key pioneering contributor to both the theory and practice of Intellectual Capital. As the world’s first director of IC in 1991 he initiated the creation of the world’s first public corporate Intellectual Capital Annual Report 1994, and inspired the development ever since on IC metrics. He was parallel to that prototyping the Skandia Future Center as a Lab for Organisational design, one of the very first in the World in 1996, and inspired many to be followed.

During 1996 he was recognised with awards from the American Productivity and Quality Centre, USA and Business Intelligence, UK. In January 1998, Leif received the prestigious Brain Trust “Brain of the Year” award, UK. for his pioneering work on IC. In 1999 noted as Most Admired Knowledge Award on Knowledge Leadership. He was also awarded The KEN Practitioner of the Year 2004, from Entovation International, where he also is an E 100. In 2006 also listed in a book by London Business Press, as one of The 50 Most influential Thinkers in the World. He is listed in Who’s Who in the world. Also associate member of The Club of Rome. He is also Cofounder and Chairman of The New Club of Paris, focused on the Knowledge Economy initiatives.

Professor Leif Edvinsson has his education from the University of California, Berkeley, USA, and Lund University, Sweden. He is the author of numerous articles on the service management and on Intellectual Capital. In March 1997, together with Michael S. Malone, he launched one of the very first books on Intelle

Leif is serving on the Board of Directors of several knowledge intensive enterprises among others earlier the Swedish Brain Research Foundation as well as for many years the Center for Molecular Medicine at Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden. Since 2000 he has been the Honorary Chairman of the UK based Henley College, KM Forum. Since 2000, he has been Professor, adjunct at Lund University on Intellectual Capital. In January 2006, he was also appointed professor adj. at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and later promoted to Chair Professor in 2007.

ctual Capital. He is also special advisor on Societal Entrepreneurship to the Swedish Governmental Foundation for Competence Development, as well as on Serciece Science to the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation.

Nadir Kolachi

University of Fujairah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)

Different theories, emerging concepts and diversified applications in modern education (A case of evaluations & recommendations)

_Contents & Contexts
_Theories & Concepts
_Practical Corporate methods
_Technology integration in learning
_Interdisciplinary Industry linkages & curriculum collaboration
_Professional development with ethical sense of care & ownership

The speech will cover different theories being taught at Business schools, emerging concepts that are interlinked with other disciplines and diversified applications in modern educational system around the world. The speech will also cover the digital integration in modern education. The speech will focus on the following parameters that are required by educators, policy makers and scholars around the world.

Robert B. Mellor

Kingston University, London

Knowledge-sharing in the development of Science and Technology Parks

Tech Entrepreneurship is of immense value in regional development and the national economy. Tech Entrepreneurship is partly dependent on economically sheltered environments known as Science and Technology Parks (STPs), who actively seek innovators and also encourage innovation amongst the constituent firms, including by networking and knowledge spill-over between the inhabitants, Universities and sources of capital. The low success rate (~20%) of STPs led us to use the ideas of Stiglitz to investigate how STP architecture can best cope with a changing and challenging innovation environment, through start-up to early maturity and full maturity. Results from using econometric methods (SEM, Monte-Carlo etc) show that it is very beneficial to have a central Cluster Initiative (CI) controlling the decision-making process (“star, hierarchy”) in the early stages of STP development, where potential gains and losses are relatively modest. However in the early maturity stage with commitment to a high-growth trajectory, a high quality of decision–making is required amongst managers and decisions are best taken by the CI with the input of more knowledgeable on-cluster firms. The situation where CI is supported by good-quality knowledge-sharing decisions from on-cluster firms – an ambidextrous situation – is superior when good innovations abound and the STP has acquired some maturity. However, in environments with a surfeit of poor-fit innovations, this becomes a high-risk strategy with high potential losses and indeed in this situation, retaining a hierarchical (CI only) decision process is most helpful, even when the quality of decision–making amongst CI managers is as poor as coin-flipping.

To summarise, STP development from small is not linear but Y-shaped: A successful strategy involves the start-up STP attracting enough small innovative firms which – in turn – attract larger firms, whose detailed sector-relevant insight improves CI decision-making. The most valuable ratio includes the CI and only any two of the larger firms; including more decision-makers does not improve the quality of decisions much but does drive the transaction costs up exponentially. If the STP cannot attract larger firms with experienced management, then the STP is best served with the CI continuing alone but, especially under conditions of growth and expansion, the cost of poor decisions will increase until eventually market failure ensues.

Susanne Durst

Tallinn University of Technology (Estonia) and University of Skövde (Sweden).

Topic – Knowledge Management in (Covid-19) Turbulent Times

VINESSA Naidoo

Tshwane University of Technology, South Africa

Topic of Keynote Speech to be announced soon