Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS) and Their Role in the Knowledge-Based Economy

Dear Colleagues,

Knowledge and knowledge management are identified, by business strategists and enterprise leaderships, as a key resource in the knowledge-based economy. Knowledge-intensive business services (commonly known as KIBS) are services and business operations heavily dependent on professional knowledge and its management. KIBS are mainly concerned with providing knowledge-intensive support for business process reformation and/or re-engineering. The development of KIBS in recent decades represents the transformation from an industrial economy into a knowledge-based economy. Today, worldwide economic development is underpinned by a continuing growth in conceptual understanding of change processes and the shift towards a knowledge-based economy, which is widely defined as “production and services based on knowledge-intensive activities”. Innovation, knowledge, reformation, training, and creativity are the essential elements of the knowledge-based economy. However, the lack of transparency, accountability, unemployment, weak economy, political instability, lack of investment in human capital, and lack of research and development are the major concerns creating challenges for the knowledge-based economy. The following are some suggestions for potential contributions to this Special Issue:

• New ideas, examples, frameworks, and theories related to knowledge-intensive business services.
• The supportive and preventative factors to KIBS and their role in the knowledge-based economy.
• The correlation between innovation factors and different value creation logics in knowledge-intensive business services.
• Changing paradigms in business processes transformation and their technological innovation, atomisation, and digitisation strategies.
• Adopting emergent technological innovations to address process digitisation and growing business world uncertainties.
• Opportunities for knowledge creation and knowledge sharing to enhance innovation.
• Knowledge management and customer relationship management as a new trend in developing open innovation.
• Integrating the digital atomisation and robotics in the emerging paradigm of knowledge management systems.
• Knowledge dynamics in strategic portfolio management towards business process re-engineering.
• The role of customer knowledge in organisational strategic decision making.

Dr. Nasrullah Khilji
Guest Editor

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• knowledge-based intensive services
• knowledge management
• knowledge dynamics
• knowledge creation
• knowledge sharing