An organization's intellect has two important characteristics: unlike physical assets, it increases exponentially with usage, and, increases most when shared. Organizations need to look outside, to span boundaries and forge links with professionals, professional institutions, and seats of higher learning such as universities to become aware of the latest trends and new developments that focus on the present and provide a pointer for the future.

It is clichéd to say that ours is a knowledge economy. It has also become axiomatic to assert that knowledge has become the most potent source of competitive advantage of firms today. Concepts such as knowledge management and organizational learning have become textbook stuff.

However, the full implication of the knowledge economy for organizations, and in particular,the usage of knowledge as a competitive asset is not well appreciated in professional discussions of HR managers.

The HR manager is rather preoccupied with questions of how to design the best workplace, maintain employee well-being and so on, and is left with little time to ponder on her roles in turning organizational knowledge to a competitive asset

Three processes of an organization's intellect

Intellect is defined as "The faculty of reasoning and understanding objectively, especially with regard to abstract matters". Harnessing knowledge depends on one's intellect. So what is organizational intellect?

In a very thought-provoking essay, Quinn, Anderson and Finkelstein explained that organizational intellect consists of four parts: knowledge of what, how, why, and self-motivated creativity. They further explained that an organization's intellect has two important characteristics: unlike physical assets, it increases exponentially with use, and it increases most when it is shared. We believe that to fruitfully use organizational intellect, three processes are necessary: sharpening, enriching, and leveraging.

Sharpening organizational intellect involves discovering existing knowledge within the organization, making the organization ready to absorb new knowledge from outside. For example, a software company needs to know it's available stock of knowledge, discover to what extent its members have knowledge of domains that are not of immediate (but potential) relevance to the organization, knowledge of emerging fields and trends in technology, exposing members to advanced techniques and the latest trends so that they are able to make sense of new technological developments in the field.

Enriching organizational intellect is facilitated when knowledge from diverse sources interact, leading to surprising and unique combinations. This requires new knowledge from external sources or from the various domains, existing within members in different verticals of the organization, interact with each other to suggest new insights, solutions to problems, or new advancements.

Leveraging organizational intellect requires the organization to recognize opportunities to apply existing knowledge or new knowledge to make existing products and processes better, or venture into new territories. An example might be to discover an employee with knowledge in a different domain and using that to launch a new product.

Three roles for HR managers

So what is the role of human resource managers vis-à-vis an organization's intellectual capability? Research over more than half a century in a wide variety of disciplines such as strategic management, organization studies, innovation management and the group behavior suggest three specific roles. Each of these roles target one of the above explained processes of sharpening, enriching, and leveraging.

I. Spanning roles

Organizations need to look outside, to span boundaries and forge links with professionals, professional institutions, and seats of higher learning such as universities to become aware of the latest trends and new developments that are not only directly relevant to the present operations of the organization, but more importantly, point to future directions. For most organizations, either this aspect is not well appreciated, or at best left to chance.

Ability, Intellect, and Intelligence

Ability

An individual’s capacity to perform the various tasks in a job.

Intellectual Ability

The capacity to do mental activities.

Multiple Intelligences

Intelligence contains four subparts: congnitive, social, emotional, and cultural

Recognition of boundaries

However, it is important to recognize that boundary spanning is the key to sharpening organizational intellect. The HR manager has an important, but very little appreciated, role in this. The HR manager is a natural fit for this role because as part of her development function, she is required to partner with trainers outside the organization, and organize developmental initiatives within.

Internal communication

Conversely, again by virtue of the HR manager's role, she is also required to communicate through the length and breadth of the organization, and is likely to be a key catalyst in reaching out to a cross-section of employees through developmental activities. Therefore, the HR manager is more likelyto encounter and discover knowledge and talent throughout the organization, as compared to the other managers who are confined within functional hierarchies.

In this sense, the HR manager is uniquely placed to span the silos in which a typically large organization is likely to be segregated. Taken together, external and internal boundary spanning by HR managers is likely to contribute to sharpening organizational intellect.

II. Pollinating roles

The second major role for the HR manager is with regard to enrichingorganizational intellect. It requires providing "discursive spaces" that facilitatediscourses - in the form of written or oral communication, including debates, discussions, usually on a serious subject.

Providing opportunities for interaction

They provide opportunities in which members are able to interact with each other, and discuss various problems and issues of common interest, not necessarily confined to organizational problems, obtain new insights, and thereby broaden their intellect. They can be physical, such as the coffee corner, cafeteria, the office corridor, or large events like conferences and seminars organized within the organization. Spaces can also be virtual, such as Facebook, Google Plus, or equivalent.

Making use of virtual space

The physical layout of office space, and opportunities for interaction in the virtual world, has been seen to impact the flow of communication. Therefore, an important role for the HR manager is to provide inputs on the design of such spaces. It can be argued from this that at one extreme, HR managers may even like to pitch in with their ideas when office spaces are being designed, and have dialogue with architects.

Besides, there are several other ways in which these roles can be enacted. In many organizations, such as Google, seminars are organized at regular intervals on a variety of topics that may not necessarily find immediate application within the organization. And cafeteria can be set up at strategic locations to ensure easy access from different parts of the office or factory.

III. Championing Roles

Finally, in order to leverage organizational intellect, opportunities need to be identified, nurtured and encouraged. In the technology management literature, it is widely recognized that product  champions have an important role in whether a product idea eventually receives top management support and sees the light of day in the market. Similarly, the HR manager needs to recognize her role as idea champions. Because of her unique position within the organization, she is able to interact with a cross-section of members.

Picking up new ideas

She should, therefore, be sensitive to pick up new ideas in conversations. At the same time the HR manager is also likely to have more ready access to senior management. Hence new ideas that are discussed in various corners on a regular basis can be picked up and projected to senior management, with due credit and recognition to the initiators of the idea, so that proper encouragement and resources are extended to enable the originators to develop their ideas further.

In conclusion, we need to recognize that sharpening, enriching, and leveraging organizational intellect is of strategic importance today. Because this intellect is located within individual members, but taken together and aligned, become an organizational feature, the HR manager has a crucial, but so far little understood and underappreciated role.