Polia : Nobody controls a market disruption

Polia Consulting is a Consulting company specialised in Knowledge Management. It was able to make full use of the market disuption which lead to the creation of this new concept. Its founder played an important role in promoting it in France. However, despite this position, Polia Consulting was not able to control the evolution of the market disruption.

Knowledge Management is a new management method which creates a disruption in the consulting market. It allows companies to anticipate the future management of its employees’ skills. It valorises them and assures sustainable cooperation between the teams. This new concept was born during the late 1990s, and it quickly got the attention of many company executives. By 2001, it became the cutting-edge theory that everyone was talking about. Polia Consulting is a consulting company which was created that same year, based on this new concept. It quickly became a leader on the market, making outstanding profits and growing at an astonishing rate. When one listens to this tale, one is admirative of Polia Consulting’s acheivement. What timing! What success!

However, Jean-Yves Prax, founder of Polia Consulting, tells his story in a much more humble manner. He confirms that he participated in the coming of a market disruption but admits never having been able to control its development. As a matter of fact his undertaking has not always been so glorious. In 1993 he created his first company, CorEdge, a consulting firm based on ideas which were very close to Knowledge Management. The first brochure edited by Jean-Yves Prax already mentioned the importance of “Knowledge” for businesses. But the market for Knowledge management was not ready at the time as no potential client saw the point in giving importance to competence management. In the meantime, CorEdge started by working in the Enterprise Content Management sector, a technological breakthrough which was then very popular for companies. CorEdge had a hard time establishing itself in a market where competition was already feirce; it indeed became a minor company in this domain and its financial situation was uncertain.

Jean-Yves Prax, while being an entrepreneur, was involved in the dawn of Knowledge Management. He lectured conferences and wrote articles and books about concepts which later became the basis of Knowledge Management. At first, his ideas were vague but they soon became clear as he expressed them in more depth. Most importantly though, mentalities in companies changed. The concept of skill management soon appealed to company directors. It was a Japanese man called Ikujiro Nonaka who made the concept of Knowledge Management official in a book called “The Knowledge Creating Company”. Immediately breathtaken by his ideas, Jean-Yves Prax spread the new theory in France. His public was enthousiastic and he was soon a big part of a mediatic outbreak which came to its peak in 2001.

It was then that business truly started to pick up for Jean-Yves Prax. He left Coredge into the hands of new owners and founded Polia Consulting which was dedicated to Knowledge Management. The new company soon prospered thanks to Jean-Yves’ reputation. Despite its recent creation, it gained a major Knowledge Management contract from a large French corporation. Business then started flowing and Polia Consulting was soon enjoying sustained growth.

When asked about how he was able to be so succesful, Jean-Yves Prax stays very modest. He humbly replies : “I happened to find myself in the right place when the tidal wave of Knowledge Management broke out”. He undeniably played a role in spreading the concept in France. He was however incapable of influencing the timing of the disruption. Would he have been able to do it, he could have forced the market to adopt the concepts of Knowledge Management earlier on. He would have then won time in the success of his entreprise.

Market disruptions have a steady development. They only take shape when two conditions are met. First of all, future clients must have latent needs for which they have not yet found an answer. In this case, companies feel frustrated with poor skill management, and other management techniques are unable to solve the problem. Secondly, a solution appears and is adopted by the clients, like the ‘Knowledge Management’ theory created by Nonaka and passed on by others. However, time is needed for clients to understand the potential of the solution, which causes the market to mature slowly.

Nobody can control the development of a market disruption. Even if the founders of the concept can legitimately claim themselves as being it’s father, they depend on the market’s evolution, which they do not control. Unless people see the point in their thoughts, their reflexions stay theoretical and approximative : indeed, the responses of their future clients are what enable them to enrich and perfect their theory. Jean Yves Prax explains: “It was the latent demand of the market which made the development of the ideas possible. When I reread the first books that I have written, I find they are flawed. It was only when companies were ready to receive the message of ‘Knowledge Management’ that it was born and was able to spread.”

Comments

[leiqiong]

The blog article very surprised to me! Your writing is good. In this I learned a lot! Thank you!
http://www.jerseysonline.co

[ghd straighteners]

change your life , change yourself and change your hair style.

[FoefFeroisa]

The Growing Smarter laws now in place compel every community to plan their future growth and allow every citizen the right to be heard when those decisions are made.