Unleashing Innovation and Creativity through Managing Knowledge in Supply Chains: Creating the Learning Chains

The research focus of recent construction industry knowledge management research has primary been the development of knowledge management strategies for a certain \u27single\u27 organisation to unleash innovation and creativity by exploiting the resources available within the organisation. The emerging paradigm of supply chain management dictates that unit of competition from organisation vs. organisation will soon change to chain vs. chain. Hence, a collective collaborative effort of all supply chain partners would be required to achieve such innovation and creativity. This research explores the role of knowledge management to serve as such a vehicle in the emerging paradigm through which innovation and creativity can be unleashed by a collaborative effort of all the members of the supply chain. The research is built on the recently completed CRC for Construction Innovation Australia, research project "Delivering inproved knowledge management and ICT diffusion in Australian construction industry" where a \u27Knowledge Advantage\u27 framework was developed for a certain organisation to unleash innovation and creativity. This paper explains how this framework can be extended to take into account the supply chain partners and create a culture of knowledge sharing through which a Knowledge Advantage for the whole supply chain can be developed and used to unleash creativity and innovation in the construction projects