Definition

The Knowledge Competition-Economy is the n+1 level of Competition-Economy in the hierarchy of complexity levels.

Discussion

The Competition-Economy was centered on material goods (including services transformed into materialized assets). In the Knowledge Competition-Economy, knowledge has become the main asset. Even material goods are considered as a sum of embedded knowledge over 3 levels:

• The raw material and their manufacturing: the extracting of raw material, their manufacturing and assembling belong to specific knowledge which represent the real value on the market.

• Standards?: today any product or service needs to fit into a wider channel of added value. Only standards --whether explicit or implicit-- allow this process.

• Marketing: this word summarizes the whole process of distribution and image. Distribution: which networks, canals, targets, etc. Image is a world by itself. It uses the knowledge we have about desires and the release mechanism of buying. The best example is given with perfumes for which price the production cost is low and the selling cost is very high. Fashion effects also play the same game in trying to make the collective unconsciousness suddenly see a superior value in the fashioned object.

These 3 knowledge fields provide the initial conditions of existence of a negociable asset on the market.

In the background, scarcity and competition remain, but it starts bringing problems since knowledge takes its value from the opposite paradigm, the one of abundance and collaboration. The Knowledge Competition-Economy has good interest in being complementary with the Knowledge Socioeconomy. Once both have reached a mature stage, they can mix into a unique Economy of Collective Intelligence.