Knowledge intensive business services

Last updated

Knowledge Intensive Business Services (commonly known as KIBS) are services and business operations heavily reliant on professional knowledge. They are mainly concerned with providing knowledge-intensive support for the business processes of other organizations. As a result, their employment structures are heavily weighted towards scientists, engineers, and other experts. It is common to distinguish between T-KIBS, (those with high use of scientific and technological knowledge - R&D services, engineering services, computer services, etc.), and P-KIBS, who are more traditional professional services - legal, accountancy, and many management consultancy and marketing services. [1] These services either supply products which are themselves primary sources of information and knowledge, or use their specialist knowledge to produce services which facilitate their clients own activities. Consequently, KIBS usually have other businesses as their main clients, though the public sector and sometimes voluntary organisations can be important customers, and to some extent households will feature as consumers of, for instance, legal and accountancy services.

The first discussion of KIBS to use the term seems to have been in a 1995 report to the European Commission "Knowledge-Intensive Business Services: Users, Carriers and Sources of Innovation" [2] In the decade since this appeared these sectors of the economy have continued to outperform most other sectors, and have accordingly attracted a good deal of research and policy attention. They are particularly of interest in European countries such as Finland. Care should be taken in reading literature on the topic, since a number of related terms are in wide use. The European Union has recently been referring to a much broader concept of knowledge intensive services (extending well beyond the business services) and to business-related services (including many services which have large markets among final consumers).

An extract from a description found in Harvard Business Online tells us: "A common characteristic of knowledge-intensive business service (KIBS) firms is that clients routinely play a critical role in co-producing the service solution along with the service provider. This can have a profound effect on both the quality of the service delivered as well as the client's ultimate satisfaction with the knowledge-based service solution. By strategically managing client co-production, service providers can improve operational efficiency, develop more optimal solutions[ sic ], and generate a sustainable competitive advantage." [3]

The European Monitoring Centre on Change (EMCC) has published online a number of reports and studies of KIBS. In the first of these, "Sector Futures: the knowledge-intensive business services sector" [4] the KIBS sectors are defined in terms of the standard industrial classification (NACE revision 1). To summarise, the main KIBS sectors are:

From NACE Division 72: Computer and related activities

 72.1:  Hardware consultancy  72.2:  Software consultancy and supply  72.3:  Data processing  72.4:  Database activities  72.5:  Maintenance and repair of office, accounting and computing machinery  72.6:  Other computer related activities

From NACE Division 73: Research and experimental development

 73.1:  Research and experimental development on natural sciences and engineering  73.2:  Research and experimental development on social sciences and humanities

From NACE Division 74: Other business activities

 74.11:  Legal activities  74.12:  Accounting, book-keeping and auditing activities; tax consultancy  74.13:  Market research and public opinion polling  74.14:  Business and management consultancy activities  74.15:  Management activities of holding companies  74.20:  Architectural and engineering activities and related technical consultancy  74.3:   Technical testing and analysis  74.4:   Advertising  74.5:   Labour recruitment and provision of personnel  74.8:   Miscellaneous business activities n.e.c.  74.81:  Photographic activities  74.84:  Other business activities n.e.c.

In the revision of NACE (rev. 2) there is some more clarity - most KIBS are located in section M (Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities), which is differentiated from more routine section N (Administrative and Support Service Activities). However, computer and related activities are in section J (Information and Communication Activities). The System in use in Canada and the USA, NAICS, does group these services together with the other KIBS.

These categories cover firms and organisations that specialise in producing these services. But other sectors may supply knowledge-intensive business services together with their main products; and such services are of course routinely produced by firms for their own use - almost all firms will have some internal office, computer, marketing activities, for instance. KIBS firms are simply specialists in these service activities, which these are their main products.

Some KIBS specialists may be lurking in many of these—are either knowledge-intensive services such as health, education, telecommunications, finance, or business-related services such as administration and security. But in general, the following sectors are not regarded as KIBS: Health/medical services, Postal services and Transport and Distribution (some specialised logistics services may be seen as KIBS), Consumer Financial and Real Estate services, Education services (other than specialised training for industry), Broadcast and other mass media (again with possible exceptions, such as when these media are also used for specialised delivery of business services as in data broadcast or encoded business video transmissions), public administration (again with some possible exceptions in industry support schemes), Repair/maintenance (with the exception of IT-related activities), retail and wholesale, Social welfare services, Hospitality, Catering, Leisure/tourism, Personal consumer services, Entertainment. Some consultancy and other specialist support KIBS-type activity often serves such industries.

KIBS have attracted a good deal of attention from innovation researchers. [5] They are both highly innovative - among the most innovative service sectors if we can go on the results of Community Innovation Surveys (CISs - these surveys are well-documented, for instance on CORDIS [6] ) (see also the work of Howells and Tether [7] ) - and many of them play important roles in diffusing innovations and helping their clients innovate more generally.[ citation needed ]

Related Research Articles

Tertiary sector of the economy Service sector

The tertiary sector of the economy, generally known as the service sector, is the third of the three economic sectors in the three-sector model. The others are the primary sector and the secondary sector (manufacturing).

Marketing research is the systematic gathering, recording, and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data about issues relating to marketing products and services. The goal is to identify and assess how changing elements of the marketing mix impacts customer behavior.

The information industry or information industries are industries that are information intensive in one way or the other. It is considered one of the most important economic branches for a variety of reasons.

Research and development General term for activities in connection with corporate or governmental innovation

Research and development, known in Europe as research and technological development (RTD), is the set of innovative activities undertaken by corporations or governments in developing new services or products, and improving existing ones. Research and development constitutes the first stage of development of a potential new service or the production process.

Management consulting is the practice of helping organizations to improve their performance. Organizations may draw upon the services of management consultants for a number of reasons, including gaining external advice and accessing consultants' specialized expertise.

A consultant is a professional who provides advice and further purposeful activities in an area of specialization.

A financial analyst is a professional, undertaking financial analysis for external or internal clients as a core feature of the job. The role may specifically be titled securities analyst, research analyst, equity analyst, investment analyst, or ratings analyst. The job title is a broad one: in banking, and industry more generally, various other analyst-roles cover financial management and (credit) risk management, as opposed to focusing on investments and valuation; these are also discussed in this article. The term “financial analyst” is not usually taken to include quantitative analysts, or “quants”.

Knowledge workers are workers whose main capital is knowledge. Examples include programmers, physicians, pharmacists, architects, engineers, scientists, design thinkers, public accountants, lawyers, editors, and academics, whose job is to "think for a living".

Professional services are occupations in the service sector requiring special training in the arts or sciences. Some professional services, such as architects, accountants, engineers, doctors, lawyers, and teachers, require the practitioner to hold professional degrees or licenses and possess specific skills. Other professional services involve providing specialist business support to businesses of all sizes and in all sectors; this can include tax advice, supporting a company with accounting, IT services or providing management advice.

A consulting firm or simply consultancy is a professional service firm that provides expert advice for a fee. Consulting firms may have one employee or thousands; they may consult in a broad range of domains, for example, management, engineering, and so on.

Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) describes the outsourcing of core information-related business activities which are competitively important or form an integral part of a company's value chain. KPO requires advanced analytical and technical skills as well as a high degree of specialist expertise.

The Trieste AREA Science Park is composed of two neighbouring campus developments located near the exit from the motorway linking Trieste to Austria and Slovenia. It covers 50 hectares, extendable to 150, in the magnificent natural setting of the Karst Plateau.

A business cluster is a geographic concentration of interconnected businesses, suppliers, and associated institutions in a particular field. Clusters are considered to increase the productivity with which companies can compete, nationally and globally. Accounting is a part of the business cluster. In urban studies, the term agglomeration is used. Clusters are also important aspects of strategic management.

A knowledge market is a mechanism for distributing knowledge resources. There are two views on knowledge and how knowledge markets can function. One view uses a legal construct of intellectual property to make knowledge a typical scarce resource, so the traditional commodity market mechanism can be applied directly to distribute it. An alternative model is based on treating knowledge as a public good and hence encouraging free sharing of knowledge. This is often referred to as attention economy. Currently there is no consensus among researchers on relative merits of these two approaches.

The Community Research and Development Information Service (CORDIS) is the European Commission's primary public repository and portal to disseminate information on all European Union (EU) funded research projects and their results in the broadest sense.

Hoare Lea is a UK-based, multi-disciplinary engineering consultancy firm, specialising in building services. The firm works with clients from the detailed design stage right through to delivery.

Service innovation is used to refer to many things. These include but not limited to:

  1. Innovation in services, in service products – new or improved service products. Often this is contrasted with “technological innovation”, though service products can have technological elements. This sense of service innovation is closely related to service design and "new service development".
  2. Innovation in service processes – new or improved ways of designing and producing services. This may include innovation in service delivery systems, though often this will be regarded instead as a service product innovation. Innovation of this sort may be technological, technique- or expertise-based, or a matter of work organization.
  3. Innovation in service firms, organizations, and industries – organizational innovations, as well as service product and process innovations, and the management of innovation processes, within service organizations.

Corporate services or business services are activities which combine or consolidate certain enterprise-wide needed support services, provided based on specialized knowledge, best practices, and technology to serve internal customers and business partners. The term corporate services providers (CSPs) is also used.

Knowledge enterprise, also named as knowledge company or knowledge-intensive company, organization or enterprise. According to D. Jemielniak, origin, and scope of this term is unclear. How this can be understood depends on how much company depends on knowledge, that in such a configuration, should be a critical asset of an organization. There is no agreement on how knowledge-intensive companies should be to be named like so. However, there are some hints to distinguish knowledge companies, since in economies, there are two groups of companies, of which one is labor-intensive, and another knowledge-intensive.

Knowledge-intensive services, abbreviated as KIS, are services that involve activities that are intended to result in the creation, accumulation, or dissemination of knowledge, where knowledge-intensiveness refers to how knowledge is produced and delivered with highly intellectual value-add. Knowledge intensive business services are the knowledge-intensive service activities for developing a customized service or product solution to satisfy the client's needs and they are provided mainly for other companies or organizations. These concepts are continuously discussed, formulated, and developed as a part of the constantly evolving academic discipline of knowledge management.

References

  1. ↑ Nählinder, Johanna (2005). Innovation and Employment in Services. The case of knowledge intensive business services in Sweden. Diva. Linköping Sweden: Linköping University. ISBN   91-85457-05-1.
  2. ↑ https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/api/datastream?publicationPid=uk-ac-man-scw:75252&datastreamId=FULL-TEXT.PDF [ bare URL PDF ]
  3. ↑ Client Co-Production in Knowledge-Intensive Business Services $6.95
  4. ↑ ef0559en1-3.qxd Archived 2006-05-04 at the Wayback Machine
  5. ↑ Miles, Ian (2018). "Knowledge intensive business services: ambiguities and continuities". Foresight. Emerald. 20: 1–26. doi:10.1108/FS-10-2017-0058.
  6. ↑ CORDIS : Guidance : Innovation Services Archived 2007-10-23 at the Wayback Machine
  7. ↑ Innovation in Services: Archived 2007-02-21 at the Wayback Machine
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.