Managing opportunities in the global knowledge society: a dynamic approach for creating values in PMTO development, design and manufacturing.

It is commonplace these days to say that knowledge is the most critical asset to be managed. Yet not many people - particularly not practitioners - invest very much time in learning about what knowledge really is and how different knowledge management (KM) is from information management (IM). Experiences from the Aalborg University experiment will be used as a case example with its unique use of problem-based education methods in connection with project and group-organised studies - to stimulate the professional learning process by a balancing of teaching/experience, theory/practice, disciplinarily/interdisciplinary and by strengthening the link between research, education and practice. Innovation as suggested is creation of a new product-market-technology- organisation-combination (PMTO-combination) consisting of three key elements: 1) Innovation is a process and should be managed as such, 2) the result is at least one new element in the PMTO-combinations. 3) The extent to which the innovation is new may range from incremental, small step innovation, through synthetic innovation, i.e. the creative recombination of existing techniques, ideas or methods, to discontinuous, radical, quantum-leap innovation. Often new means: new, somewhere on the continuum, to graduate, University, industry... society.