The ability to manage knowledge is relevant for millions of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) that operate in high-tech environments. They strongly depend on external knowledge about customers, technologies, and competitors because, as opposed to large companies, they have limited internal knowledge resources and little power to control their business environments. Present KM literature, however, mainly focuses on large companies and therefore does not explain, how SMEs, for example, can successfully apply groupware, data mining, semantic networks, and knowledge maps. This book addresses this problem by introducing the concept of knowledge integration (KI) that places emphasis on the identification, acquisition and use of external knowledge. Drawing from this theoretical basis, the book presents concepts and instruments specifically designed for SMEs, as well as examples of their implementation and use in practice.

Inhalt
Knowledge Management: More than a Buzzword.- Knowledge Integration by SMEs Framework.- Knowledge Integration by SMEs - Practice.- Organizing the Toolbox - Typology and Alignment of KI Solutions.- Elicitation Extracting Knowledge from Experts.- Codification Knowledge Maps.- Detection Electronic Knowledge Retrieval.- Assessment Making Sense of It All.- Transfer - Knowledge Transfer in Networks.- Motivating Incentive Systems for Knowledge Provision.- Supporting Knowledge Integration at SMEs The KINX Portal.- Supporting Knowledge Integration at SMEs Policies.- Wrapping It All Up - Past, Present and Future of Knowledge Integration.