Knowledge Management and Innovation

The 21 st century is an era of knowledge, know le dge is said to be particularly important. Knowledge and information have become the economy's primary raw material and its most important outcome. Under increas ingly competitive pressure, many enterprises are examining how they can better m anage their knowledge. During the last years, another concept has gained increas ing interest: knowledge management. The emerging field of knowledge management a ddresses the broad processes of locating, organizing, transferring and more effi ciently using knowledge and expertise within an enterprise. An enterprise's and its employees' knowledge is regarded as the most important corporate capital in the arising global information society. Knowledge management therefore aims towa rds improving an enterprise's ability to acquire, develop, preserve, distribute and use knowledge. This paper describes a conceptual model of knowledge manageme nt and innovation, focusing on analyzing the knowledge management and innovation process, trying to make knowledge more productive and create knowledge more eff iciently. In this paper, an integral and conceptual model of knowledge management and inno vation is presented first; then, the knowledge work process is analyzed, which i s conceptualized as a knowledge spiral; subsequently, knowledge management proce ss is conceptualized into knowledge development, knowledge acquisition, knowledg e transfer, knowledge sharing, knowledge utilization and knowledge evaluatio n, all of which can be conceptualized as a knowledge cycle; furthermore, the fac ilitating conditions for implementing knowledge management are analyzed; in the end, the input-output model of knowledge innovation is given as well as the mai n tools for assisting knowledge management are summarized.