Personal Branding as a Knowledge Management Tool to Enhance Innovation and Sustainable Development in Organizations

Abstract

Personal Branding is a relatively new discipline that derives from conventional marketing and which is focused on applying different strategies, techniques, and tools for an individual. Entrepreneurs, professionals, and employees are able to identify their prime skills and competences, communicate them correctly to their target markets, and maximize internal and external client’s satisfaction, achieving goals and objectives in their personal and professional life. Nowadays, companies require more and more competitive individuals as part of their staff. A strong Personal Branding strategy within the companies’ employees can help these organizations to pursue the successful differentiation and competitiveness that the current labor market is demanding, attracting the best professionals to their staff. This is perfectly aligned with the current economic needs, which aim to sell experiences rather than mere products or services, and Personal Branding has become a great opportunity and a valuable tool for employees to attract new and better customers, compete in a better market, or generate higher incomes. Therefore, Personal Branding could be interpreted as a tool that could enhance an innovation culture inside the organization based on client’s satisfaction and in the long run favoring sustainable development within the organizations. This paper proposes some considerations to be taken into account to take advantage of Personal Branding and its benefits in the context of an organization. This should be implemented by the companies’ Human Resources department through a proper and efficient knowledge management and dynamic capabilities implementation, in order to promote an acceptable work environment that fosters innovation, sustainable development, transparency, competitiveness, initiative, teamwork, and corporate values alignment within the organization.