Knowledge Management – Factor of Success

Innovations are crucial for the survival of firms in an ever faster moving environment. But how should a firm organize its knowledge management for tacit and explicit knowledge? Where to focus? How to ensure transfer of knowledge from customer into the firm? In this paper we first develop a list of critical factors for knowledge management (KM), using different theoretical frameworks. We identified four levels which were common to most models: Management Promotion, Infrastructure, Strategy and Evaluation. Conducting four case studies from firms in the chemical industry allowed us to compare our factors with empirical data. We found that involvement of top management is crucial for implementation of knowledge management, whereas evaluation seems to be less important. In all cases knowledge management was seen as a continuous development process. However, one of our most interesting findings is that an incentive program seems to be necessary for a successful implementation of KM in the culture and processes of an organization. We also found the customer interface to be critical for a firm. This interface is important for the development of successful and customer driven innovations.