http://globalkbdweek.mty.itesm.mx

Knowledge Based Development (KBD) is an emerging field of study and practice that has gathered momentum at the dawn of the 21st Century.

Since around the year 2000, the elements and practices characterizing an established scientific field such as specialized publications, scientific conferences and professional organizations have started to occur around the world in relation to KBD. Above all, the emergence of a distinctive social need has motivated this new field.

That need consists in making sense of and reacting adequatley to the economic, social and cultural changes brought by the shift of human activities from being predominantly based on material and financial wealth to being based on all dimensions of social value, including represented realities (ideas, emotions, etc.). That shift is characteristic of what is called The Knowledge Economy or The Knowledge Society. That shift involves the understanding and management of a value dynamics for which traditional economic thinking and tools as well as traditional categories to describe work, production, capital, business, government, civic organization, urban life, democratic participation, world order, civilization and culture have proven limited. Not surprinsingly, several existing disciplines have experienced from within the constraints of the Industrial Civilization logic and ethos, generating internal movements to find the ways of overcoming such limits. This is the case of disciplines such as Economics, Urbanism and Political Science. Other disciplines such as Geography, Anthropology and Sociology have expanded their realms by making contact with the realities of the Knowledge Societies. A few more, such as Psychology, Social Studies of Science, and Knowledge Management are finding in this cultural shift the opportunity to go back to their origins and re-emerge as ever more significant and powerful tools of human understanding and organization.

In response to the worldwide situation, where different sub-communities are trying to tackle from their own perspective the complex realities of the emerging Knowledge Civilization, this event aims at gathering for the first time those representing the major different perspectives that can contribute to an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to KBD. This intention has also driven the convention of numerous organizations under the World Knowledge Based Development Consortium, whose list appears in the following pages.

Some of these organizations, such as the World Capital Institute, the Center for Knowledge Systems, The Ibero-American Community for Knowledge Systems and The New Club of Paris have played a key role in conceiving and coveying the Global KBD Week. Also, this event has been posible thanks to the sponsorship of Tecnológico de Monterrey, the “Monterrey: International Knowledge City” Project, Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo León, Learning Review and specially the International Forum of Cultures and Knowledge Monterrey 2007, that will provide a unique environment to celebrate this exploration of the new possibilities of knowledge as a leverage of human potential.

Thus, the Global Knowledge Based Development Week is conveying around a hundred specialists from over 30 countries who will be joined by professionals and students registering in the Knowledge Cities Summit, working in nearly a hundred activities including workshops and seminars, public and plenary sessions, specialized parallel roundtables, book presentations and other events aiming to serve both the specialized public taking part in the conference as well as the general public taking part in the free and interactive Forum Dialogues. Other converging events, such as The Monterrey International Book Fair and several professional assemblies will create further synergies around KBD. All these activities shall drive to a Saturday morning plenary to take the shape of an Open Space session where all participants will engage in a definition of a Global KBD Agenda. Several scientific journals, universities, international organizations and other private and public institutions are looking forward to the results of this session as a guideline for future R&D, editorial perspectives, academic curricula and certainly, public policy and social programs focus. Other highlights such as the 1st Most Admired Knowledge City Awards shall contribute to make this week not an isolated event but a synergistic space that contributes to detonate the innovations in scientific thinking, technical development, policy design and public decision-making urgently required to inaugurate the Era of Knowledge.

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