[Column] Korea far from information culture

Anyone who has inspected an automobile factory must have been awed at the more than 20,000 parts that are assembled to become a fine automobile. It is also a marvel to see an efficient production process that starts from ground zero to a finished product in a single line.

However, there probably are not many who have seen a "knowledge factory." In the so-called knowledge factories, information is obtain and processed. The processed information then becomes an information component, which is displayed for integration.

As the demand for the information parts increases, the information packages are brought together to create a product that can be delivered. Such knowledge factories belong to a future-minded industry that does not need physical space, creates pollution, or needs to consume energy.

Many of the international consulting companies and businesses have such information centers or knowledge factories. The products at such factories include technological trend information, software solutions, management case studies, industry analysis information, the production and market research, and customer databases.

How are such knowledge factories utilized? A branch in Korea belonging to an international consulting firm needs to write a proposal for a project in Korea and request the necessary data from a knowledge factory. Then the factory puts together all information such as the latest development, production research, and software solution, and sends via e-mail to the branch in Korea the next day.

Once the order falls to the branch, the knowledge factory continues to provide necessary information during the project. When the project is completed, all results are sent to the knowledge factory, which then analyzes the new information for processing and packaging to result in new products to be displayed and in service.

In many nations, there are companies that operate such knowledge factories, providing information services to smaller companies and even to individuals, rather than solely targeting international consulting firms. As an example, the Lexus-Nexus portal site in the United States for legal and management resources provides much-needed information to students, company workers, civil servants and lawyers, who pay fees for the services they utilize for writing reports and making business decisions.

At Hoovers.com, a visitor may view a wealth of detailed analysis and information of all major businesses around the globe. Also, such media giants as the Wall Street Journal recently have begun offering vast information resources for established fees.

As more people utilize this vast wealth of information, they will be able to make better decisions, and as the people of the nation make better decisions on the whole, the nation's competitive edge will become ever sharper. In Korea, although there has been a boom in the "dot-com" industry with many offering information sites, most only provide superficial information or merely provide entertainment-related information and have been ignored by many information seekers.

If Korea had a portal site that offered easy-to-access in-depth information resources for company employees and policy makers, Korea would be able to reduce such detriments arising from the faulty decisions due to lack of information.

The call to take the lead in the information revolution to make up for the lateness in adopting to the industrial revolution seems to be fading slowly, and the concern of many for knowledge-based management has become mere rhetoric.

The Korean economy today needs such an integrated knowledge and information provider, who could run such knowledge factory as in other countries. Lacking such a domestic information provider, Korea could utilize the information resource offered by foreign providers, but those who could hurdle the language barrier and fully benefit from the foreign information resource might be quite limited.

Such lack of access to information resources, either domestic or foreign, points toward Korea's weakness in competitiveness. Much of the policy blunders that have thrown the nation headlong into economic crisis arose from such a lack of in-depth information, and the companies facing closures also could be said to have lacked proper decision-making ability due to lack of information concerning the trend in international management and operations.

The Korean information and knowledge-based portal sites, which play an important role in a knowledge-based management culture, need to garner greater wealth of in-depth information through cooperation and information exchange negotiations with other information providers.

Lastly, for an effective knowledge-based management culture, the minds of the consumers also need realignment. Korean consumers lack the concept of information being for sale. While they readily open their wallets for extracurricular studies for college entrance exams, they keep shut their wallets when it comes to acquiring information that might be necessary to make better decisions. For example, many stock investors have blown their hard-earned cash on the so-called "don¡¯t' ask, just buy" stocks.

Consumers also must abandon their notion that all things including information are free on the Internet. Only then can information society effectively play an important role in Korea.

Professor Ju Woo-Jin/ School of Business Administration, Seoul National University