THE GENERATION OF KNOWLEDGE AS AN EMERGENT SYSTEM PROPERTY: AN INTRODUCTION

The understanding of the generation of knowledge as the result of an intentional and dedicated economic activity has been the result of quite a long process. The starting point can be identified in the creation of the departments of research and development (R&D) that characterized the corporation and in the appreciation of the crucial role of the learning processes that enable the accumulation of ‘localized’ competence. The process leads to the eventual understanding of the generation of knowledge as a recombinant activity and the gradual grasping of the knowledge generation process as the emergent property of the system required quite an articulated sequence of steps. Its final outcome is the identification of knowledge as the result of an intentional and dedicated collective activity shaped not only by the interaction between the individual efforts of ‘inventors’ but also and mainly by the characteristics of the system in which each agent is embedded.