Digital Knowledge Workforce

The digital knowledge workforce has innovation potential.

The idea of 'knowledge worker' was first described by Peter Drucker in his 1959 book 'The Landmarks of Tomorrow.' He also pointed out that knowledge worker productivity is the most important challenge for management in the 21st Century. After being through more than half of the century, what’re the criteria for today’s digital knowledge workforce, when the business is transforming from industrial age to the digital era?

The knowledge worker is a) a worker with knowledge. b). a worker uses knowledge to work;c) a worker to use knowledge as input to create more knowledge. The term derives from workers having specialized knowledge in order to perform their jobs. As our society has progressed from agricultural to industrial to digital-techno-logical, the masses of workers have progressed from being farmers, then factory workers to being knowledge workers, where the primary skill needed to conduct work is their brainpower. Also, instead of producing crops or products, services are increasingly becoming the primary output of today's companies. Nowadays, perhaps, we cannot find any worker who does not have the knowledge or uses knowledge to work. Certainly, as work is different, he or she needs different knowledge and expertise. Technically every worker is a knowledge worker.

Digital knowledge workforce has innovation potential: A digital knowledge worker is someone for whom knowledge is the main input for work, as opposed to another worker who obviously uses his/her brain, but depends more on expertise in using a particular tool or set of tools. It is the ability to transform which exists to which is new, that differentiate the digital knowledge worker from industrial knowledge workers. After all, we all find new ways to make our work "easier," more rewarding, better for ourselves or our customers/clients, and for our society. Everyone displays innovation at some stage - some more often than others, some make more impact than others - it is the manager's/leader's role to encourage and nurture those who display these characteristics.

Digital knowledge workers are able to transform knowledge into knowledge-based products and services. A "knowledge worker" is someone who has gained a specific understanding of their area of work through study, training, coaching, mentorship, etc, and is capable of identifying new, innovative ways of developing products, services, or customer-focused outcomes. A knowledge worker comes with more value addition who is aware and can use tools in addition to hard work; they are capable of doing work of well planned, controllable and predictable within high complexity of determination

Today’s digital professionals are innovative workers, hard workers, knowledge workers, and intelligent workers, who are exploring, innovating, and evolving bringing new digital paradigms.

• Individuals that have the intrinsic ability to think outside the box 
• Individual who can use explicit knowledge and generate the tacit knowledge embedded in explicit knowledge 
• An individual that over time through learning, practice and education has become an expert 
• An individual who process information and data and add high value to the information and create new knowledge upon it
• Individual who has problem-solving skills

Therefore, broadly speaking, everyone is a knowledge worker now, as knowledge, under a traditional definition, for any worker is a matter of being able to use the tools, hammers, wrenches, or software and having the experience to analyze the information. or, at least, the knowledge to find a decision matrix to make an informed decision. However, a digital knowledge worker needs further ability to be innovative and intelligent, think out of the box, and solve problems with an alternative solution. 

Posted in: Digitalization,Talent Master