Knowledge Innovation and Entrepreneurial Systems

Our work exploring approaches for leveraging knowledge as a manageable asset using technological solutions started as a task force on organizational memory at HICSS in 1997. We subsequently created a couple of mini-tracks which grew into a research cluster and, finally, a full research track on knowledge management, organizational learning and organizational memory. The track has evolved into the track you see today which includes innovation, and entrepreneurial systems.

In the last few years, Artificial Intelligence (AI), in particular, Generative AI, have come on very strong. At HICSS-57 in 2024, Kevin Crowston quipped to the crowd - next year we will all look back fondly on the days we wrote our own literature reviews. Open AI had been released to the general public for less than two months. You might say we are anecdotally in the “Ask Jeeves” days of the GenAI arc. It is a virtual lock that AI will move faster than the Internet as long as we can feed it enough compute and power to keep it growing. If you believe the hype, knowledge will become less and less a capital good and much more ubiquitous. Of course, knowledge is highly dependent upon world view, experience, purpose and perspective (among others). It will be important to continue to explore both social and technical aspects of knowledge work and its role in innovative and entrepreneurial systems. It will be quite interesting to see how things develop. And, of course, the KIES research track will continue to explore the many fascinating strategies and technical approaches to utilizing knowledge assets.

This year‘s research track includes a mini-tracks that explore this evolution of artificial intelligence and its impact on knowledge work in our discipline. Papers in this year’s track continue to explore education, design, emerging technologies, digitization of work and knowledge impacts on global business. On-going work on underlying strategies, process, knowledge flows and ethical use is also well represented. Future work will continue to explore both tacit and explicit dimensions of knowledge and the equitable access to knowledge assets as our world becomes more and more “connected” using increasingly powerful approaches to collecting and analyzing the data generated from IoT devices, mobile applications, edge processing and the like. Papers should generate a great deal of interest and excitement; We look forward to discussions that are generated.

Personal Note: My friend and mentor Jim Courtney (RIP) sponsored my first trip to HICSS in 1997 as part of a task force on organizational memory. Suffice it to say there has been a lot of knowledge dropped at HICSS through the years. In the early days we had a very small but tight community. The paper sessions were highly attended and highly interactive. Breaks were spent playing pickup games and tennis when we weren’t throwing back a few Longboard Lagers. I have made life-long friendships and generated a respectable number of projects with colleagues around the world. I even have an amazing God daughter in Germany borne from a friendship that started at HICSS. Alas, this is my last run as a co-Chair for the KIES track. We’ve asked Stefan Smolnik from the University of Hagen to step in. Stefan has been attending HICCS for more than 20 years; He has been a key contributor as an author, reviewer, mini-track chair and right-hand man for Murray and me.

I speak for my wife Karen and myself in saying we have never been disappointed by the beauty and majesty of the Hawaiian islands, the kindness and graciousness of the Hawaiian people, the efficient, effective and thorough support from the faculty and staff of the host institution the University of Hawaii Manoa, the amazing leadership of professor Tung Bui, Ralph Sprague, and the team that brings you HICSS every year. Finally thanks to my friend and colleague Big KaHughna Watson for supporting our work early on and for my partner in crime, Murray Jennex, who has been the principal driver of this work for the last 25 years.

May there always be
Warmth in your Hale,
Fish in your net,
and Aloha in your Heart!.
-- Mahalo. Dave

David T. Croasdell
University of Nevada, Reno
davec@unr.edu

Murray Jennex
West Texas A&M University
mjennex@wtamu.edu