Alfons Cornella states that, as in other times in history, we are facing a technology that not only changes the way we do things, but also allows us to rethink what we do, reaching the core of the concepts previously considered as obvious. It is therefore clear that we have always used knowledge as a tool for progress. However, it has been the Internet, with its capacity to provide us with more information than we could ever handle that is making us rethink how we generate, manage, share and exploit knowledge. This is an intellectual challenge of crucial importance, but at the same time it is a critical economic need. It seems that only societies with a powerful “information culture”, with great dynamism in generating knowledge and its subsequent exploitation, will have a say in the society of the future.
This article forms part of issue 1 of the IDEES magazine, “L’arxipèlag de la identitat”, published in print format on January/March1999. The PDF article is available to download in Catalan below.


Alfons Cornella
Alfons Cornella és expert en ciència, tecnologia i innovació i en el paper de les tecnologies en la transformació de les empreses. És fundador d'Infomania, companyia de serveis d’innovació amb una xarxa de 25.000 professionals arreu del món, i també de l’empresa Co-Society, nascuda per facilitar la interacció entre empreses que treballen en sectors diferents. L’any 2017 va crear The Institute of Next, un grup de pensament i de consultoria. Ha escrit diversos llibres i articles, entre els quals destaquen The Present Future: 101 Force-Ideas to Understand the Coming Decades (2005); The Alchemy of Innovation (2007); Visionomics: 50 Ideas and Illustrations on the New Dynamic of Organizations (2010); The Solution Begins with CO- (2012); Many (2012); Ideas x Value = Results: How the Best Companies Innovate (2013); Verne, a ToolBox for Innovation (2013), i Ganarse la Libertad (2013).