A significant criterion for the production of superior business goods and services is the efficient use of available resources. Due to the accelerated change in technology as well as product innovations, shorter product life cycles and increasing globalisation, knowledge has become an important business resource upon which strategic competitive advantage can be built. Especially at locations with high labour costs, it is very important that the resource, knowledge, is taken advantage of, in order that better goods and services can be provided and made more quickly available on the market as a means to differentiate from products and services stemming from low-wage countries.

The share of knowledge in the value-added chain has increased due to the heightened complexity of products, services and processes. It will become increasingly important that the potential of the resource knowledge does not go untapped. To achieve this, a systematic and comprehensive management of this resource is necessary. Knowledge must be made quickly available and usefully applied i.e. to be able to design products and processes better than the competition

The importance in managing business resources has been known for a long time. For example, the requirement for a systematic management of financial resources is today undisputed although these management concepts were originally looked at sceptically. A firm cannot exist today without conducting some type of financial bookkeeping. Techniques and methods as well as information technology have been continuously improved and play an important role today. Similar developments for knowledge as a resource, can be observed to have taken place. Although the importance of this production factor has been recognised by most firms, lacking however, is a concept for the systematic management of knowledge as a resource.

The EKM forms the basis upon which a structured knowledge pool can be built providing knowledge continuously as well as electronically and independent of the application. This enables the efficient and focused application of knowledge available in a firm.

The Competence Centre EKM is involved in the development of integral concepts for the management of knowledge as a resource. This is, among other things, necessary in order to optimise processes, accelerate business development and increase the quality of products and services.

With respect to this, the following questions are to be answered:

• How does one guarantee that the available knowledge can be accessed from any point and at any time?
• How can one create firm-wide transparency for the available knowledge?
• How can relevant knowledge elements be selected from the available knowledge pool?

How can external knowledge be made available?

A systematic knowledge management is a significant prerequisite for the successful realisation of virtual enterprises. In this respect, it is important that intra-firm knowledge be made mutually but selectively available to business partners. This means the partial transfer of information to external partners, customers and/or suppliers.