Peter Smith

Peter Smith, as President of The Leadership Alliance Inc. (TLA), maintains a worldwide consulting practice assisting leading public and private sector organizations enhance performance by optimizing activities related to Interactive Planning and critical sustainability and innovation drivers such as knowledge management, organizational learning, entrepreneurship, and complexity leadership. Through his research and practice in Dynamic Complexity, Network Visualization & Analysis, Social Network Analysis, Complex Adaptive Systems, and other emerging paradigms, Peter has developed unique in-depth expertise in cross-organizational learning and digitally-facilitated knowledge sharing, collaborative community development, and the identification of Opinion Leaders and Innovation Champions – keys to enhancing Social Capital and successfully implementing any significant organizational undertaking. The breadth of Peter’s practical hands-on management experience has proven invaluable in ensuring that he can relate to the problems and pressures faced by organizations in today’s complex and ambiguous global environments, and it is fundamental to framing his research interests which include Triple Bottom Line Sustainability, strategic capital, knowledge management, organizational learning, social capital, entrepreneurialism, innovation, networks, complex systems, complexity leadership, digital platforms and related emerging paradigms. Prior to establishing his consulting practice Peter held various senior positions with Exxon in New York and across North America in I/T, HR, R&D, Operations, and Mathematics. In 1990 as an Exxon representative he was one of the founding associates of Peter Senge’s Organizational Learning Center (OLC) at MIT, and during the period 1990-94, first as an Exxon representative and later as an independent consultant for TLA, he participated in various systems thinking, microcomputer simulation, and system dynamics activities and projects through the OLC. During this period he also became a TLA associate of Interact, the Philadelphia-based consultancy headed by Dr. Russel Ackoff. and Dr. Jamshid Gharajedaghi. Peter has served as Professor of Management Learning Processes with the Canadian School of Management, as Executive Director of The International Foundation for Action Learning- Canada, and as Chair of the International Community of Action Learners. He is Managing Editor of the Journal of Knowledge Management Practice, and Consulting and Special Issues Editor of The Learning Organization. He is also Associate Editor (Practitioners) for the International Journal of Sociotechnology & Knowledge Management. Peter has had published more than fifty academic papers on a broad range of topics related to performance enhancement, including chapters in “The Encyclopedia of Communities of Practice in Information & Knowledge Management”, “The Handbook of Business Strategy” and ““Handbook of Research on Socio-Technical Design And Social Networking Systems”. Peter is in demand internationally as a speaker, workshop leader and conference chair.

Publications

Global Business Leadership Development for the Fourth Industrial Revolution
Peter Smith, Tom Cockburn. © 2021. 425 pages.
As the world has adapted to the age of digital technology, present day business leaders are required to change with the times as well. Addressing and formatting their business...
Exploiting KM in Support of Innovation and Change
Peter Smith, Elayne Coakes. © 2012. 11 pages.
Leveraging Communities for Sustainable Innovation: A Commentary
Elayne Coakes, Peter Smith, Dee Alwis. © 2012. 11 pages.
The concept of using future innovation to achieve “right to market” (R2M) (Koudal & Coleman, 2005) is the focus of this paper. This paper discusses the relationship between...
Affective Factors for Successful Knowledge Management
Peter Smith. © 2012. 9 pages.
The article proposes that any effort to successfully manage knowledge must be concerned not only with relevant technology, but also with the plethora of affective factors present...
Exploiting KM in Support of Innovation and Change
Peter Smith, Elayne Coakes. © 2011. 11 pages.
This chapter emphasizes the importance of formally promoting close social interaction and open knowledge sharing to achieve superior innovation capability. It does so by...
Developing Innovative Practice in Service Industries
Elayne W. Coakes, Peter Smith, Dee Alwis. © 2009. 12 pages.
This chapter presents the argument that service innovation is promoted by supporting divergent interpretations, enlarging the scope of employee and organizational skills and...