International Conference on Competitive Manufacturing The Knowledge Cube A Universal Framework to describe all Knowledge Items

It is widely stressed that a firm’s competitive advantage flows from its unique knowledge and how it manages knowledge. Knowledge is a flowing combination of experiences, values and contextual information. Innovative and knowledge-based organizations are characterized by better productivity and sustainability in the fast changing business environment nowadays. The ability to harness knowledge in a structured way will contribute to the future enterprise business success. The writer proposes a specific 3 dimensional framework that can be used to describe any knowledge item in full. This knowledge framework or ‘Knowledge Cube ’ will be shown to be a Universal Framework valid for the characterisation of all knowledge items. The field of knowledge management were studied focusing on Ontologies, Structure, Functional Breakdown and the Value of Knowledge in order to determine if the knowledge cube can be derived from literature. The idea of a knowledge cube was then tested against five virtual case studies of various complexities in order to establish the framework’s validity. All the virtual case study results indicate that the Knowledge Cube Framework is indeed applicable to a wide spectrum of knowledge artefacts however conclusive proof must still be presented in order to define this Framework as a universally applicable. It can be concluded that the Knowledge Cube can be universally applied in order to deliver a standardised view of knowledge attributes that can be used in furthering the study of knowledge management models, frameworks, value chains etc