From Capitalizing on Company Knowledge to Knowledge Management

This chapter emphasizes the problem of capitalizing on company knowledge. Capitalizing on company knowledge means considering certain knowledge used and produced by the company as a storehouse of riches and drawing from these riches interest that contributes to increasing the company's capital. Thus, capitalizing on company knowledge is not simply a technical activity, but also an essential management function. From this viewpoint, Knowledge Management, its future prospects, its role, and complementary and convergent approaches that are emerging worldwide are discussed. In addition, the guiding principle and the essential characteristics of a specific approach, GAMETH, are described. This approach is focused on the upstream aspect of the problem: how can we locate crucial knowledge for the company and identify the critical fields that require greater attention by managers to overtake worldwide competition? Finally, the results of two pilot studies performed in accordance with this approach are presented, and lessons learned from experience are pointed out.ou