What is knowledge in business?

Business knowledge is an important strategic asset. It is a sum of skills, experiences, capabilities and
expert insight, which you collectively create and rely on in your business. As a shared resource, knowledge
shapes and affects all the activities in and around your business.

Knowledge can belong to individuals or groups within your business, or exist at the organisational
level. You can also share it between different organisations.

Examples of business knowledge

Examples of knowledge that already exists in your business include:

 the skills, competencies and experiences of your workforce

 the designs and processes for your goods and services
 the industry or market data you've gained from research
 your files or documents (electronic or otherwise)
 your customer data or information on suppliers and stakeholders
 your plans for future activities, such as ideas for new products or services

knowledge is a blend of previous experience, insight, and data that

forms organizational memory. It provides a framework that can be thoughtfully applied when
assessing a business problem. Business researchers and decision makers use this knowledge to help
create solutions to strategic and tactical problems. Thus, knowledge is a key resource and a potential
competitive advantage.4

What is knowledge management in business?

Your understanding of what customers want, combined with your workers' know-how, can be
regarded as your knowledge base. Using this knowledge in the right way can help you run your
business more efficiently, decrease business risks and exploit opportunities to the full. This is known
as the knowledge advantage.

Effective knowledge management makes it possible to create, transfer and apply knowledge at
different levels in a coherent and productive way.

Knowledge management is the process of creating an inclusive, comprehensive, easily accessible

organizational memory, which can be called the organization’s intellectual capital.5 The purpose
of knowledge management is to organize the intellectual capital of an organization in a formally
structured way for easy use.

Knowledge Management System Examples

Some examples of different knowledge management systems include:
 Feedback database - A company may have a database of feedback from customers and
employees and shares this feedback with their design and research and development
departments. All members of the organization would be able to enter feedback into the database
and an integrated approach would be taken to understanding the shared information.
 Shared project files - An employee team can work collaboratively on a project. They have a
system of shared files and information that allows everyone on the team to upload and comment
on work performed by others.
 Research files - A company developing a new product conducts research on their competitors
and conducts focus groups to find out what is needed in their product or market niche. This
information is entered into a database that contains objective data on market sales potential and
indicates what assets and processes the company has in place which can be used to meet this
sales potential, meet customer needs and fill gaps within the marketplace.

Idea

An idea or set of ideas that is intended to explain something about life or the world, especially an idea that
has not been proved to be true