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In today's knowledge-driven economy, organizations ultimately derive their value from intellectual and knowledge-based assets rather than physical assets. The value of Knowledge Management relates directly to the effectiveness with which the managed knowledge enables the members of the organization to deal with today's situations and effectively envision and create their future. To get the optimal value from an organization's intellectual assets, knowledge management maintains that knowledge must be shared and serve as the foundation for collaboration. Without on-demand access to managed knowledge, every situation is addressed based on what the individual or group brings to the situation with them. With on-demand access to managed knowledge, every situation is addressed with the sum total of everything anyone in the organization has ever learned about a situation of a similar nature. Value created from intellectual and knowledge-based assets involves disseminating knowledge to employees, partners, suppliers, and even across barriers to other organizations in an effort to generate best practices and synergistic value. The ultimate goal of knowledge management is quality, not quantity. Not all information is valuable. Therefore, it's up to individual companies to determine what information qualifies as intellectual and knowledge-based assets. In general, however, intellectual and knowledge-based assets fall into one of two categories: explicit or tacit. Included among the former are assets such as patents, trademarks, business plans, marketing research and customer lists. As a general rule of thumb, explicit knowledge consists of anything that can be documented, archived and codified, often with the help of information technology.
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