HONG KONG: Knowledge should replace capital as the principle source for increasing profitability and as the engine of economic growth amid the global economic recession, a prominent local business academy said yesterday at a Hong Kong press briefing.

Echoing the precepts of the late renowned American management theorist, Austrian-born Peter F. Drucker, who died in 2005, Stephen Lee, chairman of The Hong Kong Peter F. Drucker Academy - a Hong Kong business academy named after Drucker, said development, training and creation of knowledge workers, through sound management principles, will guide enterprises through the current and future business challenges.

Drucker, a human resources-oriented management theorist, having predicted the rise of the knowledge and information-based society, stressed the importance of knowledge as capital and "knowledge workers" as key resources.

The business academy, which was first established on the mainland in 1999 and as a non-profit organization in Hong Kong in 2006, also suggests adopting lifelong workplace learning, to keep pace with the development of a knowledge-based society in the city.

Given that focus on knowledge community awareness. Lee added that the academy will train business executives across the border to be more thoughtful and responsible to their local community.

Joseph Wong, former senior government official and visiting professor at the City University of Hong Kong, concurring with the Drucker vision, said Drucker's teachings regarding building knowledge workers are very relevant to the current economic and business condition in Hong Kong.

He also noted that the transmission of knowledge over generations, which has always been important, is especially crucial in a modern knowledge-based society.

(HK Edition 10/20/2009 page4)