Abstract
Today the world has more and more of free flow of information leading to transfer of
knowledge from a person or an organization to others. Whereas this invariably leads to
faster development, it also impacts the competitive advantage held by the innovators of
processes or technology. It has therefore become strategically important for one and all in
business to understand the knowledge, processes and controls to effectively manage the
system of sharing and transferring the information in the most beneficial fashion.
This paper dwells upon definition, types, scope, technology and modeling of knowledge
and Knowledge Management while examining its strategic importance for retaining the
competitive advantage by the organizations.
What is knowledge?
Plato first defined the concept of knowledge as “œ”œjustified true belief in his Meno,
Phaedo and Theaetetus. Although not very accurate in terms of logic, this definition has
been predominant in Western philosophy (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). Davenport et al.
(1998) define knowledge as information combined with experience, context, interpretation
and reflection.
The terms “œ”œknowledge and “œ”œinformation are often used inter-changeably in the
literature and praxis but a distinction is helpful. The chain of knowledge flow is
data-information-knowledge. Information is data to which meaning has been added by
being categorized, classified, corrected, and condensed. Information and experience, key
components of definitions of knowledge,are put into categories through the process of
labeling with abstract symbols. This allows the process of synthesis to occur more
efficiently than when dealing with masses of individual bits of information. Information
coded into symbols to make it knowledge may be stored both inside and outside the
