Amongst the ranks of UK industry stand some of themost innovative and dynamic companies in the world.Many of our executives are at the forefront ingenerating ideas for new products and services andare leading their organizations into fresh approachesin the search for competitive advantage. A keycharacteristic of these successful businesses is theirability to review their experience objectively and drawout key lessons which will improve future perfor-mance.

Continual improvement is required for UKbusiness to become more competitive. Knowledgeand Process Management's focus on organizationallearning, via case studies and research, highlightsways in which UK business can develop its capa-city to learn.

I welcome all attempts to provide practical ideasto help UK businesses become world-class. I wishthis journal every success in its objective ofenabling UK companies to improve their competi-tiveness into the next century.

The Rt Hon Michael Heseltine MPDeputy Prime Minister

Over the last few years I have increasingly beengiven opportunities to discuss key issues with seniorexecutives in British industry and commerce. Acommon theme which has emerged during mydiscussions has been the overwhelming desireamongst these executives to develop their busi-nesses in an increasingly competitive environment.

I am therefore delighted to have the opportunityto support the development of our businesses, bothlarge and small, through Knowledge and ProcessManagement. By identifying success stories inBritish and overseas companies I hope the journalwill enable executives to apply best practiceprinciples to their own organizations. It is becom-ing increasingly clear that companies who recog-nize their core competencies and utilize the skillsand knowledge of all their staff are building a ®rmfoundation for the future. It is these organizations,who earn the commitment of their staff, which willbe leading UK industry into the next century.

I look forward to the future editions of Knowledgeand Process Management and to discovering moreand more success stories amongst British business.

The Rt Hon Tony Blair MPLeader of the Labour Party

I am delighted to be able to welcome you to the ®rstissue of Knowledge & Process Management: TheJournal of Corporate Transformation. The objectiveof the journal is to become the leading internationalquality journal for executives working in the areasof knowledge management and process manage-ment. The journal aims to achieve this throughmeeting executives' needs for in-depth, practicalinformation about companies' experiences of im-plementing knowledge and process management.

The editorial and publishing team are con®dentthe journal will meet its objective as Knowledge &Process Management is the latest innovation in thelife of The Journal of Corporate Transformation.

Four years ago a business journal was launchedwith the aim of becoming the leading quality,international journal on Business Process Re-engineering. The journal was Business Change &Re-engineering: The Journal of Corporate Transforma-tion. The journal quickly gained a reputation forproviding in-depth and down-to-earth case studiesalong with research papers aimed at providingexecutives with `state of the art' reviews and access

to the latest thinking on BPR. Business Change & Re-engineering rapidly established itself as the journalof choice for serious BPR practitioners and is nowthe leading quality international journal on BPR.

In order to ensure the journal set the pace aheadof the boardroom agenda, early in 1996 theeditorial team started to consider what executivescould do next to add value to their businesses. Thisdesire to be just ahead of boardroom thinking butclose enough to be of practical value, was consis-tent with the innovative editorial stance taken bythe journal from its launch.

When it was launched in 1993, Business Change &Re-engineering took a strongly different view fromthe prevailing conventional wisdom by arguingthat it was people who were critical to the successof re-engineeringÐnot IT. This people-focused andholistic view of BPR was woven together througheditorials, case studies and research papers, manyof which highlighted people issues in the list ofCSFs for re-engineering projects.

Perhaps the most important contribution of thejournal was to highlight the need for a more people

&Foreword

Knowledge and Process Management Volume 4 Number 1 pp 1±2 (1997)

1& 1997 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Cornwallis Emmanuel Ltd.

oriented approach to gurus such as Michael Hammer,Tom Davenport and James Champy, while interview-ing them for articles published in the journal.Con®rmation that Business Change & Re-engineeringhad been successful in moving conventional wisdomfrom IT-driven redesign to a more holistic, peoplefocused approach, came in a recent Wall Street Journalinterview with Mike Hammer which reported hiscomments on the people issues: ``I wasn't smartenough about that. I was re¯ecting my engineeringbackground and was insuf®ciently appreciative of thehuman dimension. I've learned that's critical''.

This quote from Hammer con®rmed the viewthat the people issues in BPR had been ®nallyacceptedÐit was no longer a battle the journalneeded to ®ght. It was time to move forwardagainÐbut what should management focus on inthe future to improve performance?

Management thinking had developed from strate-gic planning during the 1980s to a more process-basedoperational focus during the early 1990s. Manycompanies had carried out TQM or BPR projects andwere now maturing from one-off projects into processmanaged businesses. What could these executives,experienced in strategic positioning and re-engineer-ing, do next to add value to their businesses andmaintain their competitive advantage?

In an increasingly knowledge based society, it isbecoming clear that the future leaders will be thoseorganizations who build on their strategic andprocess-based operational strengths and integratethem with effective management of their knowl-edge assets. Companies will enhance their valuethrough understanding their key strengths orcompetencies, increasing knowledge through oper-ating and learning about their core processes, andapplying the resulting performance improvementsthrough process management.

In future, process managers will need to considerhow to manage the core processes of the businessin a way that enhances the knowledge base andtherefore the competitive strength of the company.They will also need to assess the impact ofproposed new process designs on the currentintellectual capital of the business and its abilityto develop intellectual capital in future.

In turn, knowledge managers will need to considerhow a process based view of operations could providethem with a framework for classifying knowledge andcapturing learning. They will also need to assess how aprocess managed approach could enable them toleverage the knowledge and learning of the businessto provide practical down-to-earth improvements inperformance.

By highlighting and establishing the linksbetween knowledge and process management, thejournal aims to help executives build on theirorganizations experience to ®nd new ways ofimproving performance.

For experienced process managed businesses, it pro-vides additional returns on their investment in processmanagement. For companies starting to addressknowledge management it provides a practical wayof translating the concepts of knowledge manage-ment into direct improvements in performance.

Knowledge & Process Management is all aboutsharing practical ways for executives to improvetheir organizations. As ever, the editorial teamwelcome any comments about any aspect of thejournal. Our aim is to be as innovative and forwardthinking as possible, sharing practical experiencewhich is directly applicable to your business andvaluable to you.

Julian WattsEditor

Knowledge & Process Management

2 Foreword

FOREWORD Knowledge and Process Management