Applying a knowledge‐focused management philosophy to immature economies

As firms, especially manufacturers, seek value‐creating opportunities, many are moving operations to low‐cost labor centers. Can firms in the mature economies seize these windows of opportunity to increase productivity in immature economies before wages rise to make their own profits, thus increasing shareholder value? This paper contemplates the ideas that a knowledge‐focused management philosophy, whether technological, process‐oriented, organization structure focused, or cultural can provide managers with techniques to seize this opportunity to create value by increasing labor productivity with less expensive labor. Measuring the value created after implementation of knowledge‐focused management programs can be hard and usually requires comparison to pre‐implementation metrics.