So basically its to spread knowledge?

In the corporate world, businesses are regularly graded on the value of their assets: They report to their shareholders about the physical assets they own, their cash in hand, and revenues and profits, both past and expected. But when it comes to measuring their knowledge assets — the value of those can be harder to gauge. However, the entrepreneurial management of knowledge assets can be critical to the success of any business.

In this interview with [email protected], Wharton management professor Ian MacMillan, who is also director of the Sol C. Snider Entrepreneurial Research Center, and Wharton adjunct professor Martin Ihrig, who is also a practice professor in the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, talk about how organizations can determine which of their knowledge assets are the most strategically relevant, and how best to deploy them.

What We Mean by ‘Knowledge Assets’

Martin Ihrig: Knowledge assets are the knowledge drivers of an organization’s success. And they can be unstructured, tacit knowledge. So as an example, there would be the deep expertise of key personnel. Or knowledge assets can be structured, explicit knowledge, codified. Examples there would be patents, copyrights and intellectual proprietary rights in codified form. What is interesting with knowledge assets is that the more you structure, the more you codify knowledge, the easier it is to share that knowledge, both internally and externally…. Very structured knowledge can be shared in milliseconds via the Internet, whereas deep expertise or experience, it takes more time to share it with other people.

Ian MacMillan: And the other thing that I think is important about knowledge assets is to think of the term “assets” like you would with physical assets. There are some pieces of knowledge that are just not valuable from the point of view of the firm. And there are others where that knowledge is basically fundamental to your ability to compete. And this is where we start to distinguish between “knowledge assets” and let’s say “strategic knowledge assets,” which are the pieces of knowledge that make a difference in your ability to compete and prosper.

How a ‘Knowledge Map’ Works

Ihrig: When it comes to physical assets, you have a balance sheet that shows you what you own or possess. It’s more difficult, more tricky when it comes to knowledge. So with a knowledge map, we intend to really identify the key knowledge resources that underpin an organization’s competitive advantage. And we map them along two dimensions: One is the structure of knowledge, unstructured to structured, tacit to explicit. And the second dimension is the level of diffusion. Do only a few people in the organization have that knowledge? Do many people in the organization have access to that knowledge? Or does the competition have access to that knowledge? Or is it available to the general public? So those two dimensions — structure and diffusion — are important to map those critical knowledge resources Twitter .

MacMillan: A sort of simplified rendition of that is depicted in the diagram that we’re looking at now. So what you have is the two dimensions. To keep it simple, highly diffused or highly undiffused, and then highly structured or codified and uncodified. So that gives you sort of four blocks in which you can place your knowledge.

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