Strategy, Innovation, and Change: Challenges for Management
Chapter 12 Leading in the Knowledge Economy
Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones
Highly talented people who are able to create disproportionate amounts of value from organizational resources are increasingly important. How you lead these ‘clever’ people is one of the keys to succeeding in the knowledge economy.
Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of the world’s largest communications services company, WPP, is as forthright as he is imposingly well briefed. ‘The only reason for this company to exist,’ Sorrell told us matter-of-factly when we talked at WPP’s London headquarters, ‘is to leverage economies of knowledge.’
He paused, before adding: ‘One of the biggest challenges is that there are diseconomies of scale in creative industries. If you double the number of creative people, it doesn’t mean you will be twice as creative.’